black Friday, boxing day, prime day.. whatever you wanna call it hasn't been a deal in at least 10 years..
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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Circa 15 years ago when (most) states had no mechanism to tax Amazon purchases at checkout, and prior to it being flooded with made-up vaporware Chinese brands, Amazon had "good deals". They would usually beat retail stores in your area by 10-15% and they didn't have to charge sales tax.
Those days are long gone. You can't even be 100% certain the legit branded stuff you buy on Amazon isn't fake. (Unless they've recently taken new measures to avoid stock mixing and prevent that.)
They're actually finally phasing out commingling.
Amazon is a racket. There, FTFY
The Keepa browser extension is a great way to see that grift, with graphs. Every time someone tells me about a good deal on Amazon, I show them that it's a price markup from the price 3-6 months ago, and teh "sale" is 10% off that marked up price.
How does that compare with camelcamelcamel? I used to hear about CCC a lot and now I never do, which makes me think bad things were found out about it.
On desktop, it shows a price history right within the Amazon product page. I love that part.
There is/was a plugin for CCC on chrome to do that, too.
Remember, this is all justified because Jeff Bezos does not yet have enough money.
(Ironically the article is paywalled. Here is the archive link.)