Script/extension to display third-party shipping costs on Amazon?

September 16, 2009 1:27 AM

I am looking for a Greasemonkey script or Firefox add-on that will show me the shipping cost for Amazon third-party items in search results.

Example: I found a bottle of Aloe Vera gel for $10.37. Thinking there had to be a better deal, I scrolled down the search results page and found a larger bottle for $8.79, making it look like the better deal. Once I clicked into the second link, the price instead was $8.79 + $8.22 shipping, making the first bottle the actual better deal.

I want a script that will get that $8.22 shipping cost (you can see where it is displayed on the page here - just above the shopping cart button) and at least display it on search results pages, if not add it in to the original cost. If this isn't possible I would also welcome a script that simply indicates on the search results page whether a product is a third-party item (indicated at the above link by the text "Ships from and sold by CosmeticMall.com") or shipped directly from Amazon.

Failing the existence of this script, I don't know javascript, so is this something I could do myself using the Platypus extension?

I found the Amazon TotalUsed 2.0 script but it doesn't work. Unfortunately, even if it did work, I'm not sure if it would only display shipping costs for items shipped by Amazon using their standard shipping prices, or also be able to retrieve third-party shipping costs.

posted by IndigoRain to computers & internet (3 answers total)

My guess is that this is possible to write, but doesn't exist yet. There's a series of Greasemonkey userscripts that look up whether a book exists in a library catalog without leaving an Amazon page – they do so by looking for certain text on another page, without leaving the page itself.

That principle in action – a userscript looking at text from a specific spot on another webpage – makes me fairly sure that this is something that could be accomplished.

I'm not the guy to do it – I'm just a splicer-and-Googler, and don't have the faintest clue as to how to code this. But I do think it's accomplishable.

If worse comes to worse and no one can find anything for you, everyone's out of work nowadays and in need of extra money – offer a few shekels and post the thing as a contract job on Metafilter Jobs and/or a few other sites. I daresay it'll get whipped up.

[But remember to share and share alike, if you're feeling generous, and post the end result to Userscripts.org and this thread ;-).]
posted by WCityMike at 10:33 AM on September 16, 2009

It wouldn't hurt to post a polite request for a Greasemonkey script. Developers read the requests and if yours sounds interesting to someone, they just might develop it. (This worked for me, but of course YMMV.)
posted by exphysicist345 at 11:40 PM on September 16, 2009

I did post the request, thanks. I haven't gotten any replies yet.
posted by IndigoRain at 10:54 PM on November 4, 2009