Now that Black Friday is approaching and an increase in purchases at Christmas time (and that prices are as they are due to inflation) it is normal for us to try to save as much as possible by trying to find the best deals in online stores like Amazon. As in other e-commerce, you have to check that the item is really discounted and corresponds to what you expect to find when you open the package.
In the following lines we are going to help you separate the wheat from the chaff and make your purchases as economical an experience as possible, but always with real offers and avoiding being fooled.
Use tools to compare prices
One of the essential tools when you usually buy online is a good price comparator. In this way, we can see with a click the price history and if we really are facing a bargain, or what is apparently a discount was the same price as before yesterday.
There are some of them, like the CamelCamelCamel price comparator, that work directly in the web version. You just have to copy the URL of an item on Amazon and it keeps track of its current price, the historical minimums and maximums and a graph with the recent changes in its cost.
If you want to automate this function, you can also go to certain browser extensions that allow you to see these graphs and statistics directly embedded in the Amazon website and have the necessary information at hand when you go shopping. A couple of examples that work quite well are Keepa (also with a website) and Chollometro.
Beware of third-party sellers
On Amazon, not only does the brand itself sell its products, but it is also a marketplace where other sellers can place their products. When the product is sold by Amazon, you can be somewhat calmer and have certain guarantees, but in the case of third parties, you must take extreme precautions.
Your best asset is to investigate the reputation of the seller. In addition to the 1 to 5-star rating of the product itself, where sellers are not distinguished, if you click on the sales options menu you will be able to see who sells it and who sends it. If Amazon does the latter, you can have a little more certainty that everything will be fine.
Within this side menu an additional score will appear, which are the ratings of this seller, with an average calculation of how they have been scored in the last 12 months. This can also help you to avoid unpleasant surprises such as products that do not resemble the description and/or images or receive some type of counterfeit.
At the bottom of the tab of each product you can find reviews only from customers who have purchased the item, to avoid both false reviews and possible review-bombing. Even Amazon allows you to upload images to this section, so they can serve as a reference to what other previous customers have received and not give you a pig in a poke.