[goobatrooba]

I use these for various European Amazon (often cheaper to buy from the Amazon next door - and shipping is still free) and it's astonishing how bad they are. It's the new Amazon systems of vouchers (in € or %), temporary offers etc that these sites can't keep up with. I saw some products before prime day with a 20% voucher that were more expensive on prime day (10% reduced but no more voucher) but the price trackers showed them as cheapest ever.

Honestly at this point I compare rather with bol, idealo, guenstiger and tweakers and am then usually better off not buying from amazon.

[alias_neo]

I wonder what the scheme is here though; Why overprice something by ~50% and add a voucher for the same amount off; is it some sort of anti-deal tracking thing?

It always puts me off from buying something expensive because I wonder if somehow I could end up worse off (in terms of returns, or warranty or something) because I bought something that was X but only paid Y due to the voucher.

Realistically, I probably wouldn't buy a high-end computing product from Amazon anyway, unless is was notably cheaper than the specialists I'd normally buy from. Something like a £2000+ mini PC isn't the sort of thing the typical UK PC retailers I buy from would stock.

[nucleardog]

I think some of the "coupons" are only usable once, so could be a way to price more fairly when there's limited inventory or something?

Like you can buy one at regular price, but 2nd and beyond get marked up 100%?

[alias_neo]

Ah that would make sense. I suppose if there's limited stock of them in the Amazon warehouse, it prevents people buying up lots of them and not leaving any for other people.

[fragmede]

> Why overprice something by ~50% and add a voucher for the same amount off

Preying on human psychology and the non-rational consumer. People are emotional impulsive creatures, and the marketing department knows this. If you think you're winning in some secret way only available to you (you're so special!), for a limited time only (so don't miss out!), it taps into something primal that turns off the rational part of our brains, and suddenly we're buying something we don't need at a price higher than we'd ideally pay.

[hypercube33]

It's for the dopamine hit of "saving money" or feeling like one has, even if you haven't

[scns]

Geizhals factors in vouchers.