Amazon's off kilter pricing

I'm not sure if negative reviews effect pricing, this has 1 negative review but is a fantastic light which doesn't dazzle drivers and an absolute bargain at this price  (£9.06) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Busch-M%C3%BCller-195L-Front-Cycle/dp/B015DJZT7G

If you see something cheap on ebay from a general trader it's often worth a look on Amazon as it's common practice for them to order in your name and pocket a small mark up.

It's quite simple really, if they remove the item as they have no stock they then have to re-enter it later.

It's much easier for 3rd party sellers to increase the price to a stupid level and then reduce it back when they have stock again

Don't forget how if you look at the same product too many times in quick succession, without actually putting it in your shopping basket, the price changes (to 'encourage' you to just buy it already!)

I remember reading about Amazon sellers using  robot pricing algorithims, where a product's price is automatically raised by comparing it to another sellers pricing.  Sometimes the price just goes up and up over time until it becomes rediculously high.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/web/04/25/amazon.price.algorithm/index....

Amazon is pretty damn unique. Genuinely one of the worst websites in the world if you're shopping as a consumer...possibly the best performing profit/turnover wise for the company owner.  A result of getting in early no doubt and it probably wont change anytime soon...which is weird as normal companies regularly have a redesign every few years and at least, are constantly testing tweaks to their site to make more money. I assume Amazon do this but the website is so bad it's hard to tell.

As for the cycling stuff...there hasn't been a search I've done in years where I haven't got the batshit mental prices come up. Sometimes you can get a discount over RRP but it's not unusual for the discount to only come in weird sizes and colours.

I think that some people are incredibly lazy, those sellers are hoping to take advantage of the people who have signed up to Prime and can't be bothered to expand their searches.

Amazon's search facility for amost anything is astonishingly bad, considering how long the site has been around.

  So many third-party sellers listing things at bizarrely high prices (never sure if it's just a typo or if they are hoping a crazy person decides to buy the thing, a tiny possibility with a huge payoff for the seller),  Or they list essentially the exact same item eleventy-zillion times, often in the wrong category, so if you try to sort by price or somethign you have to wade through hundreds of pages of irrelevant items to try and find the thing you actually want and searched for.

I find Amazon completely impossible to use for pretty much anything cycling-related. So difficult to find the right product. And yes, pricing rarely competitive with the dedicated online storefronts.

That particular one is a third-party seller, and they're the only ones offering it for sale.

I often wonder how some of this stuff gets consigned to certain sellers - I saw a car dealership offering KTM framesets for sale once, and a household furnishings seller knocking out Di2 cabling cheaper than either Evans or Wiggle.