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Amazon degraded shopping- you have to put in cart to see the price

15 points by talkingtab ↗ HN
I just went to Amazon and searched for "espresso tamper". Of the 15 top results only ONE had a price. Fourteen (14) say "See options" then "put in cart to see price"

My first thought is that it was insane. My second thought was that they must be going broke to make this kind of change. Maybe there is some other reason, but I'm wondering if I need to find an alternative.

Oh and in order to comment on this post you need to put it in your cart first! :-)

9 comments

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busymom0
I just started having this problem too. Items which were in my cart have a price but when I click ok the item, the prices keep loading forever.
thefern
I thought that was the default behavior. I think in terms of engineering, it sort of makes sense. Since a product can have multiple sellers. I am sure they could change it. My gripe was making a list for example, and wanting to see the total before adding to cart. It is PITA nevertheless. I am sure there is some psychology behing it like once you put it in cart, they give you a "cheaper" price you have nothing to compare it against. I've logged in with different accounts before and saw different prices. These days I try to buy local as much as I can.
johng
I just noticed this happening on bed frames that I'm looking for. First time I've seen it happen where the top 20 results refused to show a price. It's absolutely stupid.
LarsAlereon
This is just an Amazon site issue, lots of things are broken right now. This problem specifically appears to be caused by the site not being able to determine your location to ship to.
nobody9999
I'm having the same issue. But it's more than that at this point.

Once I worked out what I wanted to purchase, clicking the "Proceed to Checkout " button returns a "Sorry, something went wrong" error.

So not only are there issues with getting prices, one (at least me) can't even buy what they want.

It's not a huge deal (for me at least). Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

agambrahma
Tried mobile app, mobile website, desktop website

Cannot place an order to ship (!)

endless-forge
This is a known dark pattern called "price anchoring friction." By hiding the price until cart, Amazon forces comparison shopping to happen inside their ecosystem rather than on Google. You can't screenshot-compare a price that doesn't exist. It's deliberate, not broken.
psyklic
Recently about half of the items sold to me as "New" have arrived used or counterfeit. The sellers have 5-star ratings, despite numerous reviews about receiving used or fake products. Unfortunately, Amazon crosses out these negative reviews and doesn't count them toward the overall seller rating.
RedCats
Honesty, the shopping experience on Amazon is really bad. If you've ever used Chinese e-commerce websites, you'll find that most of them are much better than Amazon. Not only are the products cheap enough, but the logistics are fast, and the customer service, website experience, and so on are all great. I think the reason is that they face too little competition.