I noticed many years ago that the prices displayed for an item on Amazon could change, both up and down and sometimes in a short period of time. It is really noticible when you put some in your cart as save for later.
The thread regarding Kleins mentioned some stores that I had not been aware of one of which is ToyTrainHeaven. While cruising on my phone last night I looked up the Walthers Modern Loading Racks (933-4037) which is an item on my current buy list. This item lists for $29.98 with most online shops selling it for somewhere in the $22 to $24 range. ToyTrainHeaven had it listed at $19.87. This is an exceptional price so I sent the link to my email so I could browse the site on the PC this morning.
When I followed the link I had sent myself the price is $22.17. To ensure I wasnāt having a senior moment I looked at the page that was still on my phone and the price was $19.87. When I refreshed the page the price changed to $22.17.
That is still a good price but this is the first I have encountered this kind of variable pricing at a hobby shop. I never knew how Amazonās pricing system worked and really didnāt care. It was just something to be aware of and cautious about.
Now it seems that practice is spreading beyond Amazon. Has anyone else noticed this happening?
ToyTrainHeaven does run a weekly sale, when the sale ends prices go back up to their already nicely discounted prices.
So you may have just caught a sale item at the end of the sale.
In some 30 years that I have purchased model trains this way, most of my internet/mail order buying has been with ToyTrainHeaven and Trainworld - always good prices, always fast service.
For me it does help that Iām not real far from either one, two hours from ToyTrainHeaven, four hours from Trainworld - so lots of my orders arrive next day.
But I still buy a fair amount from six nice train stores in the region, and at the Great Scale Model Train Show held nearby 3 times a year.
On Amazon the same item may actually come from multiple vendors, so prices can change for lots of reasons.
Having worked in this business, and having actually manufactured and sold products, and having been self employed most of my life, prices change for two primary reasons:
The cost to aquire the item changes.
You have too much of something that is not selling and want to free up that capital.
The third, not so primary reason, is having a sale just to promote your business.
While that is certainly a possibility there wasnāt anything on the website last night indicating a super sale.
As for Amazon pricing changing due to multilple vendors I am talking about prices changing hour to hour from the same vendor. I believe (but donāt know enough about Amazon to prove it) that they have software that changes pricing to get you to pull the trigger. They know what you have been looking at and how many times you visit. No reason ToyTrainHeaven isnāt doing the same thing and that the first price I saw was based on them knowing it was my first visit.
I cannot otherwise explain your experiance, call them and ask them. You will get a person who knows what is going on.
All I can say is that has not been my experiance at all. I have found them to be top notch in all regards. If you have not figured it out, they are simply the internet face of a large, long standing manufacturer/distributor in this hobby.
Just two days days ago I received two new Bowser RS-3ās in C&O from them that have been on preorder. Excelent customer service, talk to a real person who knows what is going on every time I have caled them.
As someone who used to sell to Amazon, yes, they do have the algorithms and software in place to change the prices almost instantly. It got very frustrating when my customers complained about them.
Now, did you see this item on Amazon being sold by Toy Train Heaven or was the price on their website? Also, that little thing called āccokiesā tracks every move we make. Many times I will shop in what Chrome calls āIncognitoā so the place I visit looks like Iāve been there for the first time.
Last, I would never buy trains on Amazon since Iāve done the research and 99% of the time Amazon is either higher even with free shipping or not available.
Prices change all the time, even store to store in a chain. Years ago I needed bricks for a walkway local Loweās wanted 67 cents a brick, another Loweās 30 miles away wanted 37 cents, a price from 30 years ago, saved me around $500.
Well I did a web search and found your $19.87 price. But when you click that link you get a seven page listing of Walthers buildings and that item is not on any of the seven pages at any price.
So it looks like they updated that page but the Google search page is still finding a cached earlier version of that page.
Retail prices online are constantly in flux. We buy just about everything online now as it is almost always cheaper, it takes very little time, and living in a rural area it costs a bunch to drive into town.
We have three Alexas in the house and they are the best tool ever, she keeps me instantly updated on everything from stock prices to how long until my wife gets home so I can make sure I am there to help unload the groceries. The best thing she does is inform us when the price for an item drops to a low price. Say a widget is online for $24.95. We ask Alexa to watch for a drop in price. It may be a few days and she will pipe up and say āThe widget you want is on sale for $18.95ā. We just say ābuy itā.
We have been looking for a specific washer/dryer with pedestals for about six weeks. Alexa piped up one morning and told us it was on sale for $578.00 cheaper than any other price we could find. We said ābuy itā. Not only did we get a steal of a deal but they delivered it, set it up, and took our old ones away. We found out after the fact that the store had made a mistake in pricing but they honoured the price anyway. It was a huge worldwide retailer so I donāt think they suffered too much.
Prices like that often reflect āautomaticā conversion of an exchange rate, for example when an item listed in Canada is viewed by someone in the United States. This price can change as quickly as the physical exchange-rate metric being tracked by PayPal or the shopping-cart order-fulfillment provider changes.
Currency exchange rates are constantly in flux. This along with the cost of shipping containers across the ocean and the costs involved such as fuel also changes by the second. Those costs when added downstream add up to pennies on a product for the consumer.
Todays rule is get rid of old invantory as fast as possible to make room for new goods. I have seen higher ups yell at managers as Walmart on the floor that they need to be agressive on markdowns. This year all xmas was gone in the first week of new year, except for a few items which I snagged. Alot of what I snagged came in after the holiday or was lost in the back at varius stores and a few items that were labled xmas but were not. If you are a bottom feader like me it has been a feeding frenzy on food, xmas hams at Costco were $1.20 an LB and baking were 25 cents a bag at Lucky. Sorry about the rant but the points is prices out there for everything is becoming spot and that can change very rapidly, had it happen online while buying which changed my mind to buy it later.
One of the hobby shops I used to frequent would have dusty old stock on the shelves but there would be a fresh, new price sticker (pre barcode) with a āprice adjustmentā on the top sticker. The old stickers underneath would have the price blacked out so you couldnāt see how much the price had increased while the item was collecting dust on the shelf.
Sometimes Iād dig toward the back of the shelf and find an item that didnāt have an āupdated priceā and the proprietor would have a fit that I had found something that hadnāt gotten the ātreatmentā then produce the price sticker āgunā and apply a sticker right in front of me before I could check out. Mote than once I simply left the item on the counter, bought what I absolutely needed at the time and walked out.
āFlexibleā pricing isnāt something brought about with the internet.
But as someone who worked in the hobby business during the double digit inflation of the late 70ās/early 80ās I understand the business side of this.
If prices are escalating rapidly, retailers are faced with a delemma. If you sell the item at the old price, you might litterally not have the cash to put the item, or a similar item, back on the shelf.
This problem has put more than one hobby shop out of business during inflationary times.
And again, per my earlier post, pretty sure this pricing discrepancy is a cached page from a few years ago.
Well I did a web search and found your $19.87 price. But when you click that link you get a seven page listing of Walthers buildings and that item is not on any of the seven pages at any price.
So it looks like they updated that page but the Google search page is still finding a cached earlier version of that page.
Sheldon
Not some big āpricing conspiracyāā¦
I doubt the nice people at ToyTrainHeaven have the time to even think of such non-sense.
Itās not a big deal but I didnāt get the $19.87 price from a web search. I got it by doing a search for that item on the TTH page. When I clicked on the search result that is the price that was listed for the item. This was on my phone so I sent the link to my email and when I opened it the higher price was displayed.
Is it possible that I am the only one who has searched for that item in a long time at TTH and my search updated the pricing? Maybe this is related to the model of third party shippers as discussed in the Klein thread. TTH used to have it in stock and it was priced at $19.87. Now it is available from a big wharehouse and the pricing software just marked it up.
I am not trying to spread conspiracy theories. I have an interest in how businesses are run and found this intriguing.
Rick, just so I understand your point, are you suggesting that perhaps a click on the item prompted TTHās software to raise the price? If so, and with all due respect to your thoughts on the issue, I doubt that the TTH software did any such thing. If it did, wouldnāt that occur on all searches for various items on its website?
Rick, TTH is part of Bowser, their whole operation is in Montoursville, PA. It is a family run business. Their web pages are not always the slickest most up to date IT tech. In fact they recently upgraded because they were hacked by scammers about a year ago. Same answer likely applies, somehow you got an older cached page.