I’ve always been a bit skeptical about limited-time Amazon deals, so I decided to track over 500 products for 30 days to see how genuine the discounts are. I used tools like Keepa, DealSeek, and several alerts I set up through CamelCamelCamel.

  • Keepa: for spotting price bumps before discounts
  • DealSeek: for surfacing hidden coupons + 90-day lows
  • CamelCamelCamel: for longer-term tracking (but a bit slower to update)

Key Insights:

  • 45% of deals advertised as "40% off" were actually only 10–15% below the average price over the last 30 days.

  • Inflated Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Prices (MSRPs) are very common. Some products had their “original” prices increased just days before the sale.

  • Hidden discounts, such as checkbox coupons or code-based promotions, did not
    appear in search results; you had to click on the listing to uncover them.

Posted by CalligrapherRare6962

14 comments

  1. Damn, I knew some of those lightning deals felt sketchy now i got the confirmation thank you for sharing man

  5. Amazon is basically using FOMO as a pricing strategy

  6. Annual Prime Day sales are the same “sale” = “business as usual” game. The most recent one was documented somewhere on Reddit focusing on Govee products doing the “Hidden discounts……..” shuffle noted by OP.

  7. I have never seen someone comparing the price onn amazon and collecting this kind of data, its so unique good work!!

  8. Is this include only tech product or overall product princess??

  9. Been using Amazon to find products, then buying either directly or elsewhere and saving nearly every time. Amazon is good for finding things sometimes, but little else.

  10. Changing the price right before a sale is a huge no-no in retail. It’s a fireable offense if it’s on purpose and manipulative to the shopper.

  11. Wish dealseek was available for Canada. We do have Keepa though. But most things I want to buy have hidden coupons now

  12. Just to be clear: this is citizen journalism uncovering/confirming an ongoing, purposeful pattern of fraud.

    Sometimes shitty corpo behavior becomes so normal that it’s hard to remember that, yes, this is a crime.

  13. I always put my stuff onto my watchlist and write the current price into the edit field. Then I wait – sometimes for years. But so you’ll see a price dropping from 900 to 450 sometimes. The price policy on amazon is ridiously random. But I think, they will catch enough people buying at the high price.

  14. Basically half of their displayed discount? Got it. 

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