Obvious comment to various Amazon price trackers like https://keepa.com/
I was looking at one of the GMKTek Ryzen AI Max boxes and it's overpriced by ~£1000 with a ~£1000 voucher to apply at checkout; or is this part of some other "scheme"?
Honestly at this point I compare rather with bol, idealo, guenstiger and tweakers and am then usually better off not buying from amazon.
It always puts me off from buying something expensive because I wonder if somehow I could end up worse off (in terms of returns, or warranty or something) because I bought something that was X but only paid Y due to the voucher.
Realistically, I probably wouldn't buy a high-end computing product from Amazon anyway, unless is was notably cheaper than the specialists I'd normally buy from. Something like a £2000+ mini PC isn't the sort of thing the typical UK PC retailers I buy from would stock.
Like you can buy one at regular price, but 2nd and beyond get marked up 100%?
Preying on human psychology and the non-rational consumer. People are emotional impulsive creatures, and the marketing department knows this. If you think you're winning in some secret way only available to you (you're so special!), for a limited time only (so don't miss out!), it taps into something primal that turns off the rational part of our brains, and suddenly we're buying something we don't need at a price higher than we'd ideally pay.
A lot of dodgy shit happened during Covid. Like Google and iOS rolling out the largest tracking network in human history. Your phone sends a Bluetooth beacon every 30 seconds and any phone in the vicinity will pick it up and vice versa. Because of Covid. Track and trace. Guess what, it's still happening.
They said only government health institutes would get access to it. Right. Right?
The only items that seem to skirt this is repackaged items/junk from AliExpress, but they are or are pretending to be different companies.