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.

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.

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

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%?

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.

> 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.

Geizhals factors in vouchers.

I think they were locked out during Covid. Something something stock level.

A lot of dodgy shit happened during Covid. Like Google and iOS rolling out the largest tracking network in human history. Your phone sends a Bluetooth beacon every 30 seconds and any phone in the vicinity will pick it up and vice versa. Because of Covid. Track and trace. Guess what, it's still happening.

They said only government health institutes would get access to it. Right. Right?