Amazon Prime Day and the assessment of deals

It's Amazon Prime Day, and as I predicted, I have not found any ground-breaking or earth-shattering deals for anything I want to buy. I found a couple of small things for the house, but I did not get sucked into some buying frenzy.

You have to be on your toes when you shop nowadays.

Example 1:
Bose Noise-Canceling headphones 700
Amazon shows a list price of $399 and sale price of $229 (soapstone). According to Amazon, you save $170 (43%). But you can go to Bose's website without any special deals and buy the same headphones for $299. So the real savings is from $299 to $229 or $70 (23%). That's still a deal, but don't let the comparison to the list price fool you.

Example 2:
Sony WH-1000XM4 Noise-canceling headphones
Amazon shows a list price of $349 and sale price of $248. According to Amazon, you save $101.99 (29%). On Sony's website without any special deals, the same headphones are $249. Since when is $1 off a "Prime" deal?

List prices are meaningless. A sale price should be compared to the price that is normally offered. I noticed this same phenomenon when I was attempting to sell used books on Amazon. Nobody is paying the list price for a new book. Any deal should be assessed using the price you would normally pay.


Agreed. It's all psychology tricks. Amazon offered a $10 credit if you show up on Prime day. They use $10 as bait but get people to spend in hundreds as a result. We have to be on our toes indeed. 
2021-06-22 14:03:08