Amazon is a great place to shop online when you’re looking for just about anything. Their prices are pretty competitive and you can get most things shipped to you quickly with prime or for free with saver shipping.
Shopping at Amazon isn’t always straightforward though. You have to know what you’re doing if you want to get the lowest price on something. Why is that? It’s because of the way Amazon displays their products for sale.
The price for that Amazon product might be cheaper if you dig deeper
Let’s say you’re shopping for a new sander. You go to Amazon and search for “sander”. You’ll get a ton of results. They may have some labeled as “best seller” or “sponsored” which is understandable. What might not be so clear is once you look closer at one of those sanders for info. Let’s say you pick one to look into.
Once you get into that main product page where you can read about the item and see the price that was listed on the previous page you should be able to notice a little something about pricing. Some people might see the price of the item and think that’s the only price available, but they would be wrong. If you look closer you’ll see a link that says, “new and used from” and then a price after it.
Sometimes products will have used items, sometimes it will have both new and used options, and sometimes it won’t have any other options at all. You have to look around though because Amazon doesn’t always necessarily display the lowest price first. The price you see on the mail product page might be higher than a price you find within these options.
The reason for this is because Amazon sometimes wants to look out for their bottom line. Although Amazon does state that they always try to list the “best available option” for consumers that doesn’t mean that’s the lowest price. They may have listed the item there because it has the fastest shipping. Maybe it’s a prime item that people can get quickly. Or maybe it’s an item that you can get with free shipping.
Whatever the reason is it might not always be the lowest price. Sometimes it’s a vendor that is selling with Amazon, but Amazon is fulfilling the sale. You’ll see something at the top that says “fulfilled by Amazon” but it will be sold by someone else. Those are products that Amazon gets paid more for in comparison to ones that are sold and shipped by some other vendor other than Amazon.
Get into the habit of always looking at all the prices that are displayed and dig deeper into them. On the main page after a search you will see it displayed with a large main price, then sometimes another price with the link “new” after it, and then sometimes also another price with the link “used” after it. Read into those prices. Sometimes saving a few dollars is just a click away.
Time your Amazon purchase for the lowest price
If you’re shopping smart then you can wait for a good deal. This might not br true if you need toilet paper, but if you’re looking for a new laptop or a new TV you can probably hold out a bit for a good deal. But how do you know what you have a good deal?
The best way to do it with Amazon is to use a site that checks historical prices for you. Not only that, but they can also alert you when the price of the item goes down to the price you are willing to pay. The site I’m talking about is camelcamelcamel.com
Over there you can make a free account and set up price watches and alerts. If you don’t want to wait you can at least check the historical prices of things for sale at Amazon and see whether or not your item has sold for less in the past. If it hasn’t then you can feel better about making the purchase. However, if you notice that something sold for much less a couple months ago then maybe you should wait a bit or find it for sale somewhere else.
That’s all there is to it really, to shopping at Amazon for the lowest prices. I like to set up alerts and wait for a deal. If you’re ok with used items then you might be able to score some bigger savings with the “used” link prices that Amazon has. Don’t forget to check the price from all their vendors before you make your next purchase.