Kindle price changes when I log in

[jgw]

Hmm this certainly is interesting

[leaston]

I've seen this on Amazon with other products and had a polite 'argument' with their customer service people a few years ago about it. Two different PC's in the office, one logged on as me, the other having never been used with anyone's Amazon account. Two different prices on quite a range of products. We sat browsing in disbelief. We also had to provide screenshots to prove it as Amazon staff didn't believe it!

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by glypto

This happens to me all the time - price increases once I log in. I guess this is because of taxes are different in different countries....or am I wrong?

That's always what I blamed it on: when you're logged in they give you your real price, with taxes and whatnot applied for your country, and when you're not logged in you get the 'default' US or UK or 'whichever Amazon site you're looking at' price.

But I'm willing to be corrected...

[ApK]

I was going to guess some geographic issue, as well. I've never seen that happen in my US-based experience. Weird.

Originally Posted by leaston

I've seen this on Amazon with other products and had a polite 'argument' with their customer service people a few years ago about it. Two different PC's in the office, one logged on as me, the other having never been used with anyone's Amazon account. Two different prices on quite a range of products. We sat browsing in disbelief. We also had to provide screenshots to prove it as Amazon staff didn't believe it!

With non-book products Amazon typically has multiple vendors selling the same items. The multiple vendors are often changing their prices to be more competitive, so you never know what it will cost until you place it in the shopping cart. I've never had an item change in price between what was displayed on the item page and what is displayed in the shopping cart though. But if I check prices on an item multiple times during the day I often see varying prices. And since Amazon tries to display the least expensive option for an item on the item page, the vendor listed on the page changes often as well. this is usually good though as it means lower prices more often than higher ones.

Not sure what is going on with the books though. Possibly just bad programming in their database that works differently on different browsers.

[leaston]

Originally Posted by jswinden

With non-book products Amazon typically has multiple vendors selling the same items. The multiple vendors are often changing their prices to be more competitive, so you never know what it will cost until you place it in the shopping cart. I've never had an item change in price between what was displayed on the item page and what is displayed in the shopping cart though. But if I check prices on an item multiple times during the day I often see varying prices. And since Amazon tries to display the least expensive option for an item on the item page, the vendor listed on the page changes often as well. this is usually good though as it means lower prices more often than higher ones.

Not sure what is going on with the books though. Possibly just bad programming in their database that works differently on different browsers.

The frustration for us in the office was that once we logged in, the prices tended to increase. This wasn't tax being added and Amazon couldn't explain it. They profusely apologised, but refused to let us buy at the prices we were seeing prior to logging in.