Amazon beats E-Bay on price!
Written on the original Movable Type site and recovered from the Internet Archive.
In my recent comparative price shopping, EBay has always come out on top. But today I was shown up! I am shopping for the book Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics for my wife for christmas. I checked e-bay, Amazon and a couple retailers (thansk PriceGrabber) just for jollies. The funny result is that a third party seller on Amazon is in fact cheaper than all other sellers! (with the notable exception of OverStock.com which is not in every market). I was surprised that a third party beat Amazon and was expecting to find the cheapest reseller on eBay. I wonder if this is only true for books. The other interesting stat is the % of total price that is taxes and shipping! On an item around $10 bucks it can be as much as 50%!
Keep an eye on those fees!
Here are the results:
Book: The Hip Chick’s Guide to Macrobiotics
Date
12/5/2004
tax+ship
Feedback
price
taxes
shipping
total
% of price
Overstock.com
Overstock
0
9.83
0
1.4
11.23
14.24%
Any Book
Amazon
86329
10.76
0
3.49
14.25
32.43%
All Direct
Amazon
171315
11.19
0
3.49
14.68
31.19%
A1 Books
ebay
18405
11.17
0
3.99
15.16
35.72%
BestPrices.com
Best prices
0
11.8
0
3.49
15.29
29.58%
BigRockMedia
ebay
7163
14.42
0
1
15.42
6.93%
eCampus
ebay
23882
12.01
0
3.49
15.5
29.06%
Total Campus Books
ebay
103450
12.15
0
3.49
15.64
28.72%
Amazon new ship
Amazon
0
11.53
1.03
3.49
16.05
39.17%
Mega Media Depot
ebay
6521
11.18
0
4.99
16.17
44.63%
MediaCrazy
ebay
1698
16.31
0
0
16.31
0.00%
Amazon instore
Amazon
0
15.26
1.36
0
16.62
8.90%
Page 1 books
Page 1
0
11.52
0
5.75
17.27
49.91%
OddBananna Books
ebay
1195
13.32
0
4.5
17.82
33.78%