Tutorial - Tracking Prices on Amazon

You might have placed some items in your cart and have not checked out because you didn't reach the USD125 threshold. The next time you login, and went to your shopping cart again, you saw a yellow box at the top of the page.

This is really to inform you that the price of the item has changed the last time you reviewed your shopping cart. This is very common as prices fluctuate, sometimes quite drastically, on Amazon. Note that by putting items in your shopping cart does not means you have 'locked' in the price. Items in your 'Saved for later' section of the cart get the same treatment as well.

How do I then know I'm getting a good deal? Or is there a way to track the price changes over time for the items I'm interested in? In other words, in ultra geek speak, is there an 'MRTG' of the price? Yes, there is. Let me introduce to you one of the most popular price tracker : Camel3.

The UI of the website is very user friendly. All you need to do is key in the URL in the search box above, or the ASIN (which can be found in the Product Details section), or just the keyword.

Let me use the ever popular Intel 530 Series 240GB 2.5-Inch Internal Solid State Drive (Reseller Kit) SSDSC2BW240A4K5 as an example. If you follow this link and look under the Product Details, you'll find that the ASIN is B00DTPYT78. Key this into the search box on the Camel3 website. Immediately, you'll be greeted with a wealth of information. Let's take a look at the big price chart first.

The bottom axis is the date while the vertical axis is the price. There is also a red dotted line above, which represents the highest price and a green dotted line below, which represents the lowest price. On the right hand side, there's are 'Price Type' check boxes. Since we're only interested in items sold by Amazon, we'll only need to enable the first checkbox.

From the graph, we can now tell that the highest price is $300 (on Sep 17, 2013), the lowest price is $149.99 (on Nov 19, 2013) and the current price is $164.29. I'm sure you know the lowest is not $149.99 but $149.00, and that Amazon offered this item at $149 on not one, not two, but THREE occasions. Yes, that's right. Amazon offered this item on 3 different 'Lightning Deals' over the Black Friday 2013 week. It's a buying frenzy. So why am I not seeing $149 reflected? I read that Camel3 does not capture 'Lightning Deals' price information.

If you think the graph is too long a time frame (because you may not be interested in price changes a year ago), you can always zoom into the graph by sliding the bar under the 'Date Range' label. This particular item is relatively new so there's only a few months of data at the time of this writing. You can get a really huge graph for items that are available for a long time.

OK, $164.29 is a decent price but I'm betting it will go lower. But I don't want to check back every minute I'm awake to make sure. Sure, just set up a price alert on the website! Let's go back to the page again (I hope you didn't close it). Right above the chart, there is a kind of table, like this

Again, we're interested only in the first row, which is for items sold by Amazon. Just key in the desired price, your email address and hit 'Start Tracking'! If the price went below that of your desired price, you'll be alerted via email. Neat huh?

Some other tips. I also suggest you create an account with them. Include all the items you are interested in the price alerts. You can then view all your items under the 'Your Price Watches' page. I hope this enhances your ability to grab good deals off Amazon.