[nitsuaeekcm]

For those who use Amazon and want cost perspective on particular items, Camelcamelcamel is a superpower (https://camelcamelcamel.com/)

I’m sure one day I’ll find out they make money in all sorts of sketchy ways, but in the mean time it’s a great free website, and I’m continually astounded to see how often retailers play around with the prices they post.

[fasouto]

They do money by adding their affiliate code to the links.

However the Amazon Affiliate TOS [0] say:

(y) Unless otherwise agreed by Amazon, your Site must not have price tracking and/or price alerting functionality.

I see many sites with this functionality. I don't know if they all got approved by Amazon or they are not enforcing this clause.

[0] https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/operating/policies...

[maltyr]

They're a part of the affiliate program, and they are price tracking, so I would say they have implicit permission, or else they would have been long kicked off of the affiliate program.

I recall reading that the reason CamelCamelCamel is permitted is because they ONLY price track Amazon (vs tracking multiple retailers), but I can't recall where that came from.

[fivre]

Terms of Service are universally wishlists of things a legal department may wish to enforce if they are so inclined. In this case, they are not so inclined.

[stjohnswarts]

Basically the same as warnings on medications. They list almost every known symptom without any sort of probability so they're almost useless.

[estaseuropano]

They don't list symptoms, they list things that happened in the study population in clinical trials. Which is why every medicine has headache and nausea as 'possible side effects'.

[Symbiote]

In the EU, the symptoms are listed under headings like "More than 1 in 10 people had this" "Between 1 in 10 and 1 in 100 had this".

e.g. for the Moderna Covid vaccine, PDF, see "Possible side effects": https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/product-information/s...

(I looked up St John's Wort, but its assessment doesn't have this. Possible because it is from a long time ago.)

[Havoc]

To be fair that seems like one of the most respectable uses of affil links though. They’re providing actual value on top of what the supplier provides.

Happy for them to take a cut as a result

[CommanderData]

Just logged into remind everyone CamelCamelCamel shut down Europe sites during the initial Covid outbreak. https://mobile.twitter.com/camelcamelcamel/status/1242179105...

I remember reading price gouging from Amazon was revealed some months later. I wonder if they wanted to stop this being shown so blatantly.

[ziml77]

Maybe Amazon thinks camelcamelcamel is helping more than hurting?

[ct0]

Well I do use them to "time" purchases through Amazon, not look at other retailers to make my purchase location decision.

[wingworks]

I have alerts setup there to alert me when the price gets to $x, 1 of the few places I have setup like that. So in my case, I definitely buy more from Amazon because of the site.

[gonesilent]

Amazon must think so it's allowed camelcamelcamel to live on for 8+ years I've been using it.

[fasouto]

But if they think so why do they have this clause that won't allow CCC competitors?

[Causality1]

It speaks to the truth of the original post that I set up a ton of price alerts six months ago and exactly zero of them have gone off.

[mcovey]

I had one go off this morning. Second battery for my vacuum cleaner. Hooray.

[kolla]

That page could use the help of a designer / ux person. Things from the 90s look better than that.

[IshKebab]

keepa.com is an alternative. It has a Chrome extension that embeds the price graph on Amazon. Extremely useful.

[larnik]

This gives you some idea, but it doesn't include coupons, deals and lightning sales in the tracking.