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Comment by ValentineC | Hacker News Reader

  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...

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Oh man, I remember a few years ago I wrote a Python script that used CCC data to help flip seasonal items on Amazon's own marketplace. The idea being that I would buy low from a third party seller and sell high later using FBA. Kind of a fun experiment but kind of a time sink.

Generally speaking, graduate-level textbooks (which release new editions at a far slower pace) had the largest and most predictable margin. That said, I hated that fact, since I think textbooks are also the biggest racket in the education universe, and its one of the other reasons that I stopped.

Amazon collected their fees in both directions, so I always assumed that if they realized what I was doing, they had little incentive to care.

That's because the agreements don't say that anywhere that I can find. Both the affiliate agreement and the advertising api have no mention of not displaying historical prices. The advertising API even suggests it's OK if you display the date with the price.

edit: This is the section that Amazon must be referring to

"You may store other Product Advertising Content that does not consist of images for caching purposes for up to 24 hours, but if you do so you must immediately thereafter refresh and re-display the Product Advertising Content"

CCC only shows Amazon. Others show competitors. One is far more likely to send a buyer to a competitor if the pricing at Amazon isn't competitive.

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.

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

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

Not that it affects your argument, but camelcamelcamel has been around twice as long as PriceZomebie[1][2].

[1] https://www.facebook.com/Camelcamelcamelcom-154220361288305/...

[2] https://www.facebook.com/Pricezombie/info

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

It is not circular logic, but proof by contradiction.

>Maybe there's another reason altogether.

That's what I'm thinking as well.

CCC makes money off of Amazon links. Other ways price trackers make money is to sell personal shopping habits, and other data they gather. PriceZombie's developer has always stated they would not do that which is why they relied wholly on affiliate fees.

From the parent comment:

  Whether other businesses have or haven't been slapped down is only a secondary question.

Didn't Amazon buy them up a few years back?

shhhhh ;-)

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