

Pricenoia shuts down - martinml
http://pricenoia.tumblr.com/post/96524879555

======
GFischer
This part is the one I'd be most worried about:

"They also wiped all the commission fees we were keeping there."

Amazon can be a jerk and unilaterally change the rules, but wiping out their
commision goes beyond that. I know Google does the same, but it's not an
example to follow.

It's odd because Amazon has got a good reputation as a fair arbiter of
disputes for buyers, but it seems not in this case.

Things like these might impact the perception in other cases, I always thought
Amazon AWS would have better customer support than Google's developer
offerings, this might make me rethink that (I never had to contact AWS support
yet and read mostly positive things about them, so this is surprising).

I guess they violated some provision of the Amazon TOS?

~~~
Someone1234
Amazon has a good reputation from consumers, many people in the retail space
who deal with them find them quite difficult (and arrogant) to work with.

The only company I've found worse is Walmart in the US. But US retailers in
general like to make one anothers' lives as difficult as possible, even when
they depend on each other to even exist, I don't get it! In western europe
(aside from a few French companies) most businesses are pretty cooperative,
and want to reduce workload not increase it arbitrarily (looking at you US
companies, again).

I just think Americans love bureaucracy. It reminds me of Futurama with the
"central bureaucracy" where everyone there takes pleasure in making things as
slow and inefficient as possible.

~~~
smackfu
Suppliers and retailers on opposite sides of the table, both trying to get the
best deal. I don't know why they wouldn't have an adversarial relationship.

~~~
Someone1234
You're talking about buying/selling, I am talking about what happens after
that has taken place. After a supplier has agreed to sell at X price and a
buyer has agreed to buy at X price they're no longer in an adversarial
relationship, they're now in a symbiotic one.

How is it you think product physically moves from company A to company B?
Through osmosis? There are physical trucks, and a ton of technological
infrastructure behind the scenes to make that happen (from orders/invoices,
through to inventory metadata (e.g. expiry dates), and all of the organisation
that has to happen so all the trucks don't appear at the loading dock at the
same/wrong time.

------
Stratoscope
A couple of months ago Amazon changed _its own_ price tracker to make it much
less useful than it was before. I'm talking about the "Important messages
about items in your Cart" that appears at the top of your cart when any prices
have changed since the last time you viewed it.

They've had this feature for many years, of course. It used to be an
incredibly verbose list with a bunch of boilerplate text repeated for every
item, and the items were in apparently random order.

With only a few items in your cart this wouldn't matter much, but I use the
Saved Items for a list of things I might want to pick up sometime but don't
need right now. So I may have as many as a hundred items or more there. With
Amazon prices fluctuating as much as they do - often by only a few pennies -
it was hard to spot the more interesting price changes.

A couple of years ago they made some nice improvements to this feature on both
the desktop and mobile sites. All the boilerplate was pulled out making the
list much easier to scan, and the list was sorted in descending order by price
change. So the items with the most interesting price changes were right at the
top.

But a couple of months ago this list took a big step downhill. On mobile, the
item names are no longer tappable links, and on both desktop and mobile the
sorting was taken out! The list is still nicely formatted, but it's back in
random order again, so the items with significant price changes are hard to
find among all the two-or-three-penny changes.

I thought this was probably just a bug, but now I wonder if it was a
deliberate move on Amazon's part. It seems they not only want to shut down
third party price trackers, they don't want their own tracker to be very easy
to use either.

~~~
annnnd
One would think it is not in Amazon's best interest if their customers are
vigilant in price comparisons. ;)

------
fookyong
The scary part of this isn't that they were denied access. It's that they were
denied with no opportunity for appeal.

As an entrepreneur this is probably one of the number 1 nightmare scenarios:
one day you're in business, the next day you're not.

We always say never build a business off an ecosystem you don't control but
the fact is there are many, many businesses that do just fine from it - and on
the flip side, even non-ecosystem businesses are fragile in other ways (such
as Uber being regulated into illegality in certain parts of the US and Asia).

That's just business! Somewhere, someone is just waiting to fuck you over :)
the challenge is to make your fortune or build up your defenses before they
do!

~~~
tehwebguy
> It's that they were denied with no opportunity for appeal.

And even if there was an appeal process it would still be unilaterally decided
by Amazon.

It's the same feeling I get from Google whenever something goes down.

------
patd
My price comparison tool Shoptimate.com got hit a few months back. It's not
Amazon only so I can keep the lights on but it sucks for Pricenoia.

Amazon has been changing the rules lately. They're not allowing installable
software anymore and only allowing mobile apps that are not focused on
shopping. They also refuse websites optimized for mobile. This is after they
excluded affiliates over the state tax issues in the US.

Wikipedia says that Amazon gets 40% of their revenue from affiliates. They're
probably dominant enough that they don't need to rely on affiliates as much as
they used to.

~~~
bitJericho
This isn't a new thing. Amazon hasnt allowed installable software (without
prior approval) nor have they allowed price comparison sites for years and
years and years. Actually, have they ever allowed it?

~~~
patd
This changed last year. It now says: "Except as agreed between you and us in a
separate written agreement (...) you will not use any Content or Special Link
(...) on or in connection with: a. any client-side software application"
[https://affiliate-
program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/oper...](https://affiliate-
program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation)

But it used to say: "You will not include on your site, display, or otherwise
use Special Links or Content in connection with any spyware, malware, virus,
worm, Trojan horse, or other malicious or harmful code, or any software
application not expressly and knowingly authorized by users prior to being
downloaded or installed on their computer or other electronic device."
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130401033525/https://affiliate...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130401033525/https://affiliate-
program.amazon.com/gp/associates/help/operating/participation)

------
userbinator
_On a side note, Amazon does not allow the use of its API for price trackers,
they made that clear, and has lately made it very difficult to get the data in
other ways._

If people can still access the same data just by going to Amazon with their
browser, I don't see any fundamental reason why they wouldn't be able to get
the data if they really wanted to. I've always believed that APIs on websites
are more than just convenience - they're a way for corporations to exert
control over the data they give out, sort of like DRM.

In the same way, they're also pretty trivial to circumvent; with webscraping,
the major issue is that your traffic stands out, but distribute it widely
enough and it won't look anything different from the _massive_ traffic Amazon
gets already. You could make a browser plugin and have your users do it for
you (just make sure your privacy policies are stated clearly...!)

I'm willing to bet that Amazon's data is already being scraped by many other
sites, so that also gives rise to this similarity: the "pirates" win, the
"legitimate users" going through their API lose.

~~~
eli
I'm sure it's technically possible to scrape Amazon. I'm much less confident
that it would be legal.

~~~
wrath
Amazon has made it much harder to scrape their site in recent months. They now
give captchas to bots that try and access their site to often by the same IP
address. Unless you have a very large pool of low cost proxies, crawling
millions of prices on a daily basis is challenging. I think this is what he's
referring to when he says """and has lately made it very difficult to get the
data in other ways."""

~~~
toomuchtodo
The best way to do this is with your users using a Chrome extension to feed
the data back to you. User lands on a page? Send the data back to your
scrapper processing API.

------
davidw
They mention [http://camelcamelcamel.com/](http://camelcamelcamel.com/) \- but
I don't get why they haven't got the axe as well.

~~~
joshdance
I was wondering this as well?

------
polyvisual
I've not seen priceonia before - what's the difference between that and
camelcamelcamel?

Reading the blog post it seems as though camelcamelcamel will be forced to
shut at soon, too?

~~~
martinml
I use Pricenoia to check prices in the different european Amazons, because
pretty much all items can be shipped to other countries within Europe. As far
as I know camelcamelcamel doesn't do that :(

------
josefresco
Just found and have been using PriceZombie
[http://www.pricezombie.com/](http://www.pricezombie.com/) ... does this
effect them as well?

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paulhauggis
This is the norm with Amazon.

They will shutdown your account, take your money, and ignore your emails/not
give you any real reason why they shut it down.

Amazon is an evil company that abuses their monopoly position on a daily
basis.

On top of this, when you are a seller, they get to keep your customers. You
can't contact them outside of Amazon or get any personal info.

------
tmgp
[http://www.tropicalprice.com](http://www.tropicalprice.com) is another
alternative, without the fancy features of pricenoia like graphs and other
info.

------
Titanbase
I was looking at the Uber API, and thought about comparing prices between Uber
and Lyft... then I read this blog post on Pricenoia and it changed my mind.

It does seem like a gamble to work with a company's API. It also seems like
free work, but perhaps with donations you could make it work.

~~~
josefresco
If you understand it to be a temporary venture and plan for the next step, you
can still use API's etc. and create unique web apps that will attract users
and give you either publicity or short term revenue.

~~~
Titanbase
My primary goal when starting any business is to create a sustainable,
reliable income.

Also, I like to focus on businesses that, once I set my vision in place for
satisfying customers, I can guarantee that the service will be there for my
customers.

~~~
josefresco
That's fine... my point was that temporary businesses/platforms can provide
you the assets (exposure/cash/partnerships) needed to launch your sustainable,
reliable income.

~~~
Titanbase
I'm not sure why you are arguing with me. I have stated what I am interested
in when in comes to building a new business.

I am not looking for exposure, cash or partnerships -- those aren't the
problem at all -- but I am looking for sustainable, trustworthy, long-term
business ideas.

I have no problem building a business on another business' API's, but based on
the track record of doing so, and your comments about them being temporary by
nature, I think I will stay away from them.

I think we're in agreement there.

------
EToS
It looks to be only a matter of time before amazon seek out other targets,
such as pricezombie.com, camelcamelcamel.com

------
legohead
Could this be a hint at a larger business move? Such as, unique pricing by
customer?

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hari_sem3
Semantics3 (www.semantics3.com) has been tracking Amazon for almost 2 years
now (we have price histories to boot!). We can, and do still offer price
comparison functionality for products sold on Amazon; you can also compare
these prices against other domains.

~~~
finkin1
I'm a happy customer of Semantics3, although the number of products they have
data for isn't overwhelming.

