looking for a more powerful Amazon search tool
February 24, 2014 11:51 AM   Subscribe

Is there a way to search Amazon by price and actually get results within that range? I recently found a pretty sweet deal on a nice nail polish when I needed a filler item and was looking through the offers on Amazon Filler Finder, but I'd like to search for more items within a tight range like that. Unfortunately, when you tell Amazon to return, say, items under $5 it still returns results up to $8, and when you're looking for really cheap stuff-- like under $2-- it's even worse, returning pretty much the same results you got for the $5 search.

Is there any third-party Amazon search tool that would let me do this? Browser add-ons and the like would be fine. It seems like the fact that there are tools like the Filler Finder would mean that something like this would be possible to make, but I'm not finding anything. And no, sorting from least to most expensive doesn't help, since it plays pretty fast and loose with the idea of putting things in a particular order, even when you tell it not to display the most relevant results first.

I need to be able to separate Prime eligible and/or items with free shipping available, since otherwise it'll be entirely people charging a penny for items and then making up the entire cost in shipping.
posted by NoraReed to Shopping (4 answers total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
It's been suspected/ somewhat proven that Amazon practices price discrimination, especially for prime customers. Its knows you're looking at nail polish, you've spent X dollars on nail polish in the past, and will likely purchase Y more in the future. If it can upsell you for $0.30 this week, times the thousands of other people like you, it adds up.

I don't know if someone will post a better tool for this, but you can try using a different browser or deleting your cookies and trying the search again.
posted by fontophilic at 12:04 PM on February 24, 2014


Well, A. itself makes it harder to find cheap stuff for a specific price range. Like you noticed, OP, they include offers from the marketplace and the prices are all over the place, not sorted.

I know a tool that can help for the UK site. It allows to search for a specific price, say 1.33 or whatever. It also shows price history and drops for products and allows you to look through items from a selected category, say for example "Beauty", from cheapest to most expensive.

I've used it to good effect when I needed an item that was in a narrow price range. My experience is mostly from before they started this add-on item nonsense although it seems it works just the same way it did when I used it. The site is called jungleninja.

Guess it won't help in your case specifically, sorry. But why shouldn't something like this exist for the US?
posted by travelwithcats at 12:25 PM on February 24, 2014


I have better luck searching when I am not logged in. I search, put things in my cart, then I sign in and buy. Then I sign out again.

I also remove everything after the real URL for the item if I bookmark it. I found that if I left it as Amazon made it, I had odd things happen with the price over the course of just an hour, especially if I was logged in.

Amazon is a weird thing.
posted by AllieTessKipp at 12:54 PM on February 24, 2014


Terapeak

Disclaimer: I am friends with the founder.
posted by KokuRyu at 2:52 PM on February 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


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