
PriceZombie is shutting down - viach
https://www.pricezombie.com/announcement
======
mattlutze
The issue here wasn't that they were just using Amazon's API and then lost
access. The Amazon TOS says _don 't store and display our old prices_ and, per
the post, that's what PriceZombie was doing.

The lesson is that if you're doing something in violation of a partner's TOS
and start to negatively effect their business, the partner is well within
their rights to cut off access. Whether other businesses have or haven't been
slapped down is only a secondary question.

~~~
ValentineC

      The Amazon TOS says don't store and display our old prices
    

How is Amazon fine with CamelCamelCamel [1] then? It seems like they make
money off Amazon affiliate links too.

[1] [http://camelcamelcamel.com/blog/how-our-price-checking-
syste...](http://camelcamelcamel.com/blog/how-our-price-checking-system-works)

~~~
djsumdog
They probably just haven't been caught yet. Amazon is massive and has tons of
people who use their Affiliate API. There's probably a small enforcement team
that looks at stuff like this. Price Zombie might have just gotten large
enough to show up on their radar.

~~~
meritt
CCC has been around for a very long time. That seems very unlikely they
'haven't been caught yet'.

~~~
sangnoir
Well, PriceZombie was around for a long time too and they 'hadn't been caught'
until recently. So maybe it's not unlikely

~~~
unclebucknasty
This is circular logic. Maybe there's another reason altogether.

~~~
sangnoir
It is not circular logic, but proof by contradiction.

>Maybe there's another reason altogether.

That's what I'm thinking as well.

------
specialp
It is against Amazon's interests to have price comparison these days. Early on
in my computer shopping days I'd hit pricewatch and buy from random vendors
based on price. Eventually this company called Newegg often had the near the
lowest price always and had great service. I soon went to shopping at Newegg
consistently without bothering to go to pricewatch. Newegg could have raised
prices slightly but I did not want to waste time with untrusted vendors.

The same is true with Amazon now. Once they started selling essentially
everything at often the lowest prices, I switched to buying from them almost
exclusively. Then Prime came and things came to my home within 2 days
guaranteed. Now almost everything I buy comes from them. Mostly I do not
bother to comparison shop. But sometimes Amazon actually has grossly inflated
prices on things. I believe this is where a lot of their margin comes from. I
am not going to waste my time going to 10 different sites to shop around, but
with price comparisons like camelcamelcamel I can tell that the item went up
50%. Amazon is likely to lose business more often than not on price comparison
sites because many people would just go to Amazon and buy in most cases, but
if the price comparison site shows a bad price they will lose the business.

~~~
gdulli
I never got Prime because the yearly cost of it (even before the price went
up) did not amortize to an acceptable shipping cost. I take the slower free
shipping because I'm not impatient or buying on impulse.

So I've never been locked into Amazon and always been free to shop around. And
I can absolutely confirm that Amazon is no longer the "default" winner on
price. Sometimes they are, but often not. I don't even have to spend a lot of
time shopping around to find this. The same deals are everywhere now.

~~~
frogpelt
Walmart still meets or beats them on price many times and I can buy online and
pick it up on my way home which is effectively same-day delivery.

~~~
riskable
That requires leaving the house though. Even worse, it requires _going in to
Walmart_.

~~~
cookiecaper
A lot of Walmarts have drive up grocery loading now. Order on the app, drive
up, they load your groceries into your trunk, and off you go.

------
patio11
_Our appeals to Amazon affiliate program administrators
(associates@amazon.com) and even Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) were either
ignored or answered incompletely, leaving us wondering if anyone was
listening_

I was once in a room with Dave McClure and a ~50ish companies he had funded.
He announced that he was taking a tour of partnership teams at two members of
AppAmaGooBookSoft and asked for who wanted to come with. A handful of hands
were raised.

Dave McClure got frothing mad, and not his normal frothing character mad, but
I think actually angry.

"LISTEN UP. 80% of you are building on these platforms. If you do not have a
direct line to God at their HQs you ARE NOT TREATING THIS LIKE A BUSINESS. You
will %(#)%#0 fail. If you are working with one of these companies, and you are
not on that bus, you are dead to me."

I don't think I'd phrase it like that, but the core message is exactly
correct. The standard platform deal is, indeed, in the event of an issue you
can write to an inbox that no one reads. You _do not want that deal_.

You should, as early as practical, identify _an actual human_ inside the
mothership and convince them to like you. You should then lateral from that
actual human to other actual humans so that you do not lose your beachhead if
your actual human is re-assigned. If you do not do this, when you inevitably
have a problem, you will be reduced to taking it to the HN front page and
hoping an actual human takes pity on you. Pity is a much less likely outcome
than convincing an actual human than you are scads better than their median
semi-anonymous participant in the partnership program, which is pretty easy,
because their median participant is terrible _and all processes are designed
to treat them as such_.

I am aware that this some people will perceive this as unfair because getting
better-than-publicly-available access to one's business partners seems like
you're at a position of advantage vis-a-vis the people who can only send mails
to /dev/null. Is this an advantage? Yes. If you believe this is an unfair
advantage, I would strongly counsel you to negotiate honestly and in good
faith with your counterparties at your largest business partner and source of
existential risk, and not worry so much about other putative businesses which
are not sophisticated enough to negotiate honestly and in good with faith
their core suppliers.

~~~
fweespee_ch
I'd strongly urge that in Amazon's case this advice is functionally irrelevant
as they aren't a reliable business partner that reacts in a consistent way
when it comes to MWS operations regardless of who you know that works there
unless its Bezos himself.

~~~
AznHisoka
I agree. The advice by patio is generally sound, though in this specific
scenario, I don't think Amazon would ever care. PriceZombie offers negligible
profit compared to the billions Amazon makes. Even spending 0.5 seconds on
their case is a waste of their time.

~~~
Domenic_S
I don't agree with that at all. We have to guess how much transaction volume
PriceZombie sends to Amazon, but $50k/month isn't an unreasonable estimate
(probably very low). It is totally worth a couple hours of a support person's
time to deal with the source of $600k of annual revenue.

~~~
Implicated
I wouldn't be so quick to disagree.

I spent 2 years generating over $1mil a year in sales through the Amazon
affiliate program - to be dropped without warning or contact. No amount of
follow up and attempts to contact my, previously very accessible, account rep
resulted in anything. Not even an explanation on why my account was closed,
outside of being told that I could take legal action (in the state of
Washington) against Amazon to collect on the nearly $40k in yet-to-be-paid
earnings.

~~~
Domenic_S
I disagreed that it 'would be a waste of their time'; not saying they'd act
rationally. In my limited experience it seems like they don't.

------
mwexler
All the comments on "don't rely on 1 customer" are correct, of course, but I'm
more interested in how, as far back as the 80s, we all believed in the magic
of having something show us the best price for an item. Now, sure, it may
often be Amazon, but not always, and they don't carry everything.

So, multiple price engines come and go. Why? Because consumers won't pay for
them, and so they rely on kickbacks from merchants. Same for Travel
sites/aggregators, and for review sites: You either get folks to pay for them
(of which Angie's List was the only kind of success) or you get vendors to pay
you (Yelp, any affiliate aggregator (Creditcards.com, etc.), price engines).

I guess I wonder: I love CamelCamelCamel, I loved PriceZombie, I loved
PriceRunner and Jango and all the rest... but they keep going away. Google
killed google shopping comparisons, as did the other portals. We can probably
all think of ones we used that are all gone now.

What kind of service would one have to create that grabs prices but can charge
consumers so it's not depending on affiliate vig? And given that many
merchants are creating terms of service to block displaying of their prices
(we see this also in the travel industry), will one of the earliest dreams of
the internet, that of a flat marketplace where I can evaluate all players and
their pricing and pick the best store for me, still fail to come to life?

It feels like online shopping has become a big mall, where I have to go to as
many sites as I can find til I get tired and just buy the thing at the most
recent site (or just trust that Amazon is the cheapest). I hope we can avoid
this fate.

(Update: fixed typos)

~~~
ikeboy
What's wrong with Google shopping? I've found deals using it, it's had greater
than zero value for me.

>What kind of service would one have to create that grabs prices but can
charge consumers so it's not depending on affiliate vig?

I've got a handful of ideas about this and have been considering a startup
along these lines. I think that you need to take control of the actual
purchase, so then it's just "Oh, I paid less than I expected, some may have
gone to the middleman but I still win" instead of "I paid money to X for the
purchase and to Y for finding it for me" and feel somehow losing out for not
finding it yourself. If anyone wants to discuss this I added an email to my
profile.

This is kind of like what Jet was doing when they first launched, although
they've stopped it since, apparently because stores didn't like it.

~~~
MrApathy
> What's wrong with Google shopping? I've found deals using it, it's had
> greater than zero value for me.

The Google shopping that exists today is not the same service that was
originally launched. It used to function more like a standard search, but
limited to all online stores. So long as there wasn't a robots.txt, Google was
index the site and include the product in their shopping results. So basically
like standard search, but with logic to determine if a site represented a
store.

Then Google modified shopping so that it was opt-in for the retailers, meaning
a large number of stores were no longer included. To be included in Google
shopping now a retailer must have a Google merchant/adwords account. It's more
of a curated search now.

Nothing wrong with it now, but it used to be great for finding hard-to-find
items or items that were mispriced by less sophisticated retailers.

~~~
ikeboy
I know that they moved to paid inclusion, but as I said, it's still useful. GP
said it was "killed", and that seemed too much.

~~~
mwexler
Killed from it's original vision; the remaining is a shadow of what it was.
Big shadow, admittedly. But fair point, my hyperbole may have gotten out of
control.

------
elbigbad
This sucks, but unfortunately is something that is not unlikely to happen when
one's whole service is hosted or relies on a third party API for its data. I
recall something similar happening with a service that relied on the Google
Maps API to draw coordinates or something. And Google pulled API access
because the service was too similar to what Google Maps did with trip
directions, or something.

Unfortunately this is a reality of basing, or largely basing, a whole service
off of a third party.

~~~
Etheryte
The point here is not that they're relying on a third party, but the fact that
Amazon banned them from the api while their competitors/alternatives can still
use it without constraint.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Isn't that a bit like complaining to the police officer who pulled you over
that other people were speeding, too?

~~~
CaptSpify
As far as I understand it, this is different because they were "previously
told we were in 100% compliance with the rules"

So, it's more like a cop pulling you over even though you weren't speeding.

~~~
omginternets
I think you guys are stretching the analogy way too far. As I see things: it's
a private matter and doesn't map well onto a public analogy.

The bottom line is that Amazon can deem it acceptable to allow behavior one
day, and change it's mind the next. If you systematically rely on your
partner's humor, you're doing something wrong.

~~~
CaptSpify
I agree its allowed for amazon to do this, but its still a dick move

~~~
omginternets
Right, and that's the point! If you're systematically in a position where you
have to worry about "dick moves" from your partners, you're doing something
very, very wrong.

Amazon might be dicks, but not to the extent that PriceZombie is foolish.

(I get the sense we're saying the same thing, though :) )

------
acconrad
YC partner Aaron Harris had a similar problem with his first startup[1], and
is a lesson for all startups:

It's risky to rely on one customer for the majority of your revenue.

90% of PriceZombie's revenue was dependent on affiliate revenue, and thus
Amazon. Similarly, virtually all of TutorSpree's revenue was dependent on SEO,
and thus on Google, and when Google changed their algorithm, they saw a
similar fate.

[1] [http://www.aaronkharris.com/when-seo-fails-single-channel-
de...](http://www.aaronkharris.com/when-seo-fails-single-channel-dependency-
and-the-end-of-tutorspree)

~~~
AznHisoka
This is part of the risk of startups/business. This is like the opposite of
survivorship bias...

Think about all the successful companies out there that DO depend on third
parties:

\- Buffer (Twitter has a bad day? Cut their API access off!)

\- Candy Crush (Apple hates them? Remove their apps!)

\- RetailMeNot (Google thinks they're spam! Delist them!)

\- DuckDuckGo (Bing hates them? Cut off their API access)

\- Heroku (Amazon has a bad day? Cut off their AWS Access)

\- MailPlane (Google doesn't want Gmail apps?! Cut them off!)

~~~
shostack
Just because these companies are doing well _today_ says nothing of the
potential impact this (still very present) risk holds for them.

------
great_kraken
Honestly I'm (selfishly) kind of glad that they're shutting down, as awful as
that is. I browse Reddit a lot and the fact that every single time somebody
posted a product, there would always be a PriceZombie bot commenting bugged me
to no end.

~~~
nathancahill
I've found that very helpful. Otherwise, I feel like I'm gambling when I buy
something on Amazon. I could be getting the lowest price, or the highest.
Amazon's price games are the worst (I know all stores do that to some extent,
but Amazon's price swings are much bigger.. +-75% anecdotally)

~~~
great_kraken
Yeah, I guess I'd rather search myself if I'm actually considering buying a
product. And most of the time, if I'm participating somewhere, I'm not
actually looking for purchase advice myself, just reading, helping out, or
discussing.

~~~
nathancahill
I guess I'm pretty often looking for purchase advice in a lot of the
subreddits I frequent. Helpful to get advice from people with domain
knowledge.

------
pink_dinner
"However, our appeals to Amazon affiliate program administrators
(associates@amazon.com) and even Jeff Bezos (jeff@amazon.com) were either
ignored or answered incompletely, leaving us wondering if anyone was
listening. "

This is pretty standard for Amazon marketplace seller services. They take a
16%+ cut of all of your sales and have absolutely nobody to help you when your
account is banned or disabled by one of their auto bots.

This happened to a client of mine a few years back. Near 100% feedback,
complying with every rule, and one day they get the ban hammer (for a claim
that was later withdrawn by the original person that filed it).

Amazon withheld $50,000 for over 3 months while they were 'investigating'.
After 3 emails where Amazon responded with canned responses, they said the
matter was 'closed' and all future emails would not be answered.

Do NOT do business with Amazon. You will end up sorry and probably without a
business. As as an associate or marketplace seller, they own all of your
clients and you are responsibly for anything bad that happens. When you get
kicked, they have all of your data, your clients, and your money for 90 days.

On top of this, they compete with their own marketplace sellers (unlike Ebay)
and use all of your sales information to undercut you. I witnessed it many
times with the above client.

This should be against the law. I think the only reason they haven't been sued
out of existence is because their so big.

------
codegeek
Feel bad for them really. But this is a classic example of the risk you
undertake running a business where you core depends on a third party. It is
astonishing that they lost 90% of their business just due to amazon closing
their affiliate account.

~~~
djsumdog
I saw a girls startup plan that involved exclusively using Facebook. I was
like, "You really need to support Flickr, Twitter. You shouldn't depend on one
source for your customers to pull photos." She said they were just going
Facebook because it was the quickest route to get a deliverable product. She
obviously wasn't an engineer and I'm sure any software dev will tell you if
you support at least two services, you'll write code in such a way that's
expandable to many (more modular, classes for each service type). Even if that
2nd service may not have any customer base, it's worth the implementation cost
just to have.

This doesn't really relate to this story as Price Zombie did utilize many
different sites, but it does show just how big the giants are (like
Facebook/Amazon) that even if you try to support lots of different sources,
one of them can make or break you.

------
manmal
Here in Austria, Amazon pays the major price comparison website to be listed:
www.geizhals.at

And I hear it's not cheap for them.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Well, being listed on a price comparison website is basically advertising, and
can funnel a lot of traffic to Amazon if they are often the cheaper or better
choice. This service just used referrals to make a bit of money instead,
probably because there's a lot more price comparison website competition in
the US and Amazon doesn't want to fund them all to get listed.

They get away with it too, because a price comparison website is not feasible
without having amazon as one of the shops.

------
shostack
As others here have noted, the affiliate game is a risky one. You are in
essence a sales rep for whichever merchant(s) you work with. A merchant has
ZERO legal obligation to continue working with you, and can often discriminate
against you as they see fit, terms be damned.

If you don't own the relationship with your primary source of revenue, your
business is built on a rocky foundation, and if the weather is fickle enough,
you can be washed away overnight.

Having been an affiliate, managed an affiliate program, and worked with an OPM
to manage the program, I can say that stuff like this happens all the time in
the industry, and that's why the #1 rule for affiliates is "diversify
diversify diversify."

------
jijji
If your objective is to write a crawler that parses pricing information from a
third party web site, then write the crawler. Relying on the third party to
provide a consistent API that can be remotely communicated with is setting
yourself up for failure. These companies can quickly ban you from their
platform when using their API. At least by writing the crawler yourself,
you're making it much more difficult for them to do this. Another lesson is
that building a business model around the availability of a third party is
also a recipe for failure.

~~~
josho
> building a business model around the availability of a third party is a
> recipe for failure.

Rather, I think it's that a business model that is not complimentary to the
third party is the problem. E.g. Amazon doesn't want historical price tracking
for as it could lead to folks discovering price manipulations and a decrease
in margins. So, that's the issue--the business was not a compliment. Let's
imagine a startup that was generating new sales from a long tail market
segment too small for Amazon to target directly, then that's a good business
model as it compliments Amazon and leads to new sales they wouldn't otherwise
see.

TLDR if you rely on a partner, make sure your business helps their business.

~~~
elbigbad
Which is a great strategy, until the business releases something that
duplicates your functionality and cancels your access.

~~~
794CD01
If your product was well made and fairly priced, they would never need to.

------
zaroth
Probably too late to comment (what a shame discussion is so time limited) but
what interests me about this story is that they call out hosting costs as the
reason to shut down.

I would love to see numbers from this operation, like we saw after Everpix. I
would love to understand the scale, if it really would cost so much to host
it?

So perhaps the actual take away is they didn't really violate the ToS as it is
written, but they got kicked out and should have known it would happen. They
may have been targeted because they show competitors pricing. Either way, it's
sad to lose the service, but hard to chase those customers, because the
customer won't pay. They are trying to sell the IP and maybe the company, and
apparently there's some sturdy tech with broad applications!

What's so tricky is the dispute isn't about API access for the latest pricing,
but rather their affiliate revenue. That can be canceled for any reason at any
time, so that they still get the API and could find other revenue streams is a
key point. They are not "entitled" to Amazon affiliate revenue, so then the
question is -- where's the story?

------
nefitty
Damn, this is exactly what I've been looking for for the last year. Any
alternatives?

~~~
dynofuz
im working on [https://percht.com](https://percht.com) (it's still early)

~~~
froseph
It's giving me a 502 bad gateway :(

~~~
dynofuz
...fixed

------
hvo
Padmapper was forced to shut down too by Craigslist.When are we going to learn
that this type of business model is unsustainable?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4149455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4149455)

~~~
gdulli
Yeah if you're just regurgitating someone else's data you haven't really
created anything. You might leech some money off someone else's marketplace
for a while but don't expect it to last.

~~~
mthoms
>if you're just regurgitating someone else's data you haven't really created
anything

If you're regurgitating in a manner that is beneficial for both parties _and_
the customer then I'd say you've created something extremely valuable. Just
ask Google.

------
ChuckMcM
I find such actions puzzling, in a world where (charge per click) CPC
advertising no longer works due to click fraud, (charge per action) CPA
advertising offers a sane alternative. Only pay for the actions of customers,
if someone buys, you pay, if they don't, you owe nothing. And yet CPA is
treated like a really off color way to feed a few pennies to bloggers.

In this case Amazon doesn't like past prices being stored and shown. Ok, I get
it that doing so exposes sellers who price high during "rush" seasons and low
during "off" seasons, or the difference in price quoted to a Dallas IP address
versus one from San Francisco, but shouldn't those sorts of shenanigans _be_
exposed?

------
unclebucknasty
They note that Amazon is "afraid of services that compare their prices with
other stores".

It's more likely Amazon just doesn't see the value. Why would they want to pay
a company to drive traffic to Amazon, only when Amazon's prices are lower?
Otherwise, they actively drive traffic to their competitors? Amazon is not in
dire need of traffic, and with their algorithmic pricing, information is an
advantage.

Perhaps there is a business case that can be made. But, OTOH, it doesn't
strike me as irrational that Amazon would rather not.

------
rand1298
Amazon associates is corrupt and not worth your time or its existence. They
will wait until day 29 of 30 then shut down your account (after they collect
revenue) and find any reason to shut your account down. They have no
obligation to state a reason in their email to you. It's a scheme at its
finest, unless you are willing to settle for working 8 hours a day for 20
dollars a day capped.

------
NicoJuicy
Can you create this a self hosted application? Then Amazon can't really track
this ( i suppose).

They should suddenly start tracking thousands of affliates and you could earn
some money from it :) ( i suppose)

Eg. Something like [https://sendy.co/](https://sendy.co/) , i believe they
earn plenty of money also :p

~~~
toomuchtodo
Chrome extension for scraping and affiliate link placement?

~~~
Kerrick
They wrote that into the Terms of Service a couple of years ago. I know
because I created one before the rule change and had to remove that part.

------
DiabloD3
Dear PriceZombie:

I will pay you $ _x_ a year to keep your service functional. Go figure out
what _x_ is, given the number of active users you have , and what it costs to
keep the service open.

Also, email me at pmcfarland@exelion.net. I am a service provider, I might be
able to help you cut down your cost of operating.

------
ryao
I am going to miss their price protection tracker that emailed when the price
dropped within a certain period of time following a purchase. That let me get
the difference refunded by my credit card company.

------
girkyturkey
This is such a shame... I really enjoyed PriceZombie to display old prices,
even though they shouldn't have been doing this. I wonder why Amazon changed
their mind after 3 years?

------
DanBlake
Im guessing the reason you were canned was less to do with historical pricing
and entirely about the fact you let them compare with other sites.

I am fairly certain amazon hates that with a passion and is in fact why you
dont see that feature on CCC.

Also, Its my understanding that all of these price comparison sites get a
severely discounted affiliate rate from amazon- Something like 1%

------
jazoom
This is sad. I really feel for them. I'm making a similar website for another
country and am planning to bring it to the US later this year. It will largely
fill the gap of Price Zombie. Big shoes to fill, though.

------
tylercubell
For PriceZombie and many other businesses, depending on one major revenue
source to survive can be a death sentence and at the very least pose an
existential risk. Let this be a hard lesson in diversification.

------
ap22213
It seems kind of extreme to shut down based on that. Wouldn't the technology
be useful for other uses? I'd imagine that some would pay for that kind of
historical data.

~~~
Jemmeh
The thing is there are other websites giving that historical data away for
free. Their affiliate accounts haven't been shut down (yet?).

So PriceZombie just can't compete. Makes me kind of wonder if they were just
the "top" website doing this, and so they suffered from too much success.

~~~
JBReefer
It's because they compared with other services, and Amazon has been raising
prices across the board lately, which they don't really want people to figure
out.

------
johnward
The lesson here isn't about breaking TOS. The lesson is that if you build a
business around a 3rd party API that party can crush you at any moment without
reason.

------
frozenport
Why do they need an account? Can't they just crawl Amazon and get price info?
Or is their business only viable if they can collect a percentage of your
purchase?

~~~
brianwawok
Exactly. Affiliate is their only profit. Sure they can crawl and link, but
they would get 0 profit from that.

------
xbryanx
I'd pay (once) for software that periodically ran on my computer, pinging a
URL for a price, tracking it locally, and giving me an alert at a change
threshold.

~~~
chipperyman573
You could probably make that overnight. Just send a cURL to the page and look
for the text of the span with the ID "priceblock_ourprice". Then log that to a
comma delimited text file or something.

~~~
stevekemp
But the real problem would be updating your code every time the appropriate
website(s) changed their markup.

In a hosted service that's easy; if you're selling something people download
you'll have to ensure timely updates.

~~~
chipperyman573
Which is why, unfortunately, this product can't realistically be a one-time
fee.

------
viach
Why didn't they come to an agreement with one of the Amazon's competitors? It
sounds like a logical next step which needs to be taken to survive.

------
maindrive
This is what happens when you rely totally on third party and then when you
grow you ,company will be closed either by a buyout or legal termination.

------
samp615
This blog is "loser talk".

------
elorant
Let me just ask the $64.000 question. Why did they ever bothered with the API
and not just crawl Amazon for whatever products they needed?

~~~
sangnoir
It wouldn't make a difference: it is their _affiliate_ account was that was
closed - which is how they earned money. Affiliate account = getting paid
"kickbacks" by Amazon for customer referalls from PZ's site that result in
purchases.

------
johnward
The immature part of me would have just done a massive url redirect to a
competitor. I would say change the links on the page but that would probably
get you in even more legal trouble.

------
JustSomeNobody
> Press: If you're interested in running a news story about our situation and
> why Amazon is afraid of services that comparison shop Amazon's prices with
> other stores, please contact us at support@pricezombie.com

Yeah, that's really going to help your situation.

1) You built your product on top of someone else's service. That's always a
rocky road. It is common to read about other companies in your shoes.

2) In the time you were operating you couldn't make a single contact at Amazon
in case stuff happens?

~~~
InsideTrack
1\. PriceZombie was not built on top of Amazon. PriceZombie indexes products
and prices in over 100 online retailers. The developers always had the option
of using the PZ website as a front end to gather personal shopping habits and
other data that is valuable to advertising and marketing companies - which is
what many (most?) price trackers do as their primary source of revenue. PZ
opted to get their funding from retailers instead. People purchased mostly
from Amazon, therefor when Amazon pulled their affiliate program funding dried
up and PZ had a choice - go to the dark side, close up, or sell.

2\. They had many contacts, some of them quite high. PZ is a very ethical and
methodical company. They dotted their i's and crossed their t's. They had an
open dialog with Amazon where they were repeatedly told, in writing and on the
phone, that they were in full compliance and there was no problem. The problem
with Amazon is inconsistent and arbitrary enforcement of their own rules.

The developers are in discussions now with companies that want to purchase the
technology - including my own, though I don't think we can afford them. This
is no garage set up by comp sci students. The developers have impressive
credentials and they have created a very impressive system that has wide
application to other uses.

~~~
sangnoir
> PriceZombie was not built on top of Amazon.

Not technically for the reasons you stated. However, it is evident that
PriceZombie was financially built on top of Amazon's Affiliate program. It's
hard to argue against that when Amazon contributed 90% of revenue

~~~
mysql102
That is dictated by where consumers end up shopping. You can diversify to
thousands of stores, but if Amazon is the biggest seller, they will get the
lion's share of the click throughs and purchases.

What PZ did was show users who shop at other stores, that Amazon was cheaper,
and funnel users to Amazon. Sometimes Amazon wasn't cheaper, but I wonder if
this is all about to change.

------
heyplanet
UPDATE: Hey, lot's of downvotes for this post. Would be great if you guys
could explain why you downvote.

Sorry, but not much sympathy from me.

1) You knowingly violated the terms of service. Therefore you are denied
service now. Nothing to complain about. Honestly, if the API of _my_ website
would be intentionally abused in a way that I explicitly exclude in my TOS, I
would be seriously pissed. I would probably think about suing you. Not only
denying you further service.

2) You whine, bitch and complain because others did not get the same treatment
as you. There are also many murders and robbers who are not in prison. If it
would not be allowed to put one criminal into prison unless we put them all
into prison, there would be no law and order at all.

3) You encourage the problem. By shutting down just because Amazon kicked you
out. Why not address the problem that 90% of your revenue came from one single
retailer? Why not talk to the other retailers and the users and see if there
is a way to work it out? Do the _difficult_ thing: CREATE! Don't beg!

Sorry, if this sounds harsh. I welcome and applaude every tech entrepreneur.
But please stand up and fight for the right thing. For a better world. Not
just for a bit of profit by bending the rules.

~~~
stale2002
They were TOLD that they were 100% in compliance with the rules and that there
was no problem. And then one day things changed for no reason.

~~~
jayess
Told by whom? An Indian online chat customer service rep? Some sort of account
executive?

~~~
mysql102
Associates team is on shore and there is no way to directly contact them. They
contact you.

