this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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This practice is so widespread on Ali that finding the best price/seller that is likely to get the item to you balance is ridiculously time consuming, a lot of the time the cheap item is something barely related to the item you're searching for. It also seems to be creeping into Amazon at the moment!
Yeah, it really caught me off guard the first time I used the site. It was during one of those special celebration discount days where they had the audacity to mark items as literally $0.01 when basically nothing was that price.
For 3D printer filament, which is usually bought in 1kg/2.2lb spools, most places list a 2m sample or a 250g spool to game the search. And my other favorite is the whack-a-mole shipping setup where on variation might be free shipping, but choose a different color and the shipping jumps to $300+.
With Amazon, I'm seeing a ton more overpriced items discounted to still higher priced than their competition. If you look at their deals pages, you can find things like portable monitors for $70 (down from $150), but checking that category shows the same monitor (same specs under a different name) for $60.
Here's as close as I can find right now, since all the lightning deals are ending for the day. There's a USB laptop docking station that's "discounted" from $139 to $70. There isn't an exact match (there usually is), but similar products go for ~$60-$70 (2 HDMI, 4+ USB3 ports, 100W PD, ethernet). What's funnier is that the specific company's Amazon site has at least 4 identical docks at slightly different prices.