One of the biggest advantages of buying from Amazon apparently just went out the window. It used to be that if the price on an item you bought—such as, for example, a Kindle or Fire—dropped within seven days after you purchased it, Amazon would refund you the difference on request. However, Recode reports that Amazon has ceased providing these refunds except on televisions.
In fact, Amazon claims that the policy was always limited to televisions, and customers who’ve received refunds on other items have received “exceptions.” But it seems there used to be a lot more exceptions than there are now. Recode attributes this to the growth of services such as Earny and Paribus that track a customer’s purchases and check daily to see if their price has dropped so as to request a refund automatically.
What might have been a nice service for people who cared enough to keep track of things for themselves might be less tenable when services are tracking it automatically. Amazon does a lot of number-crunching and frequently adjusts its prices automatically based on the outcome. If it had to deal with a flurry of automatic refund requests every time it did that on any given product, the overhead of dealing with them could soon become overwhelming.
So, if you’re going to buy a Kindle or Fire from now on, better steel yourself for buyer’s remorse if it goes on sale within a week—Amazon apparently is no longer interested in issuing a refund for the difference.
It sucks that a bunch of people basically ruined it for the rest of us.
However there are services like Pinx! and The Camelizer that will email or tweet you if the price dips below a certain point. There’s a lot less buyer remorse if the price is at or under one you want to pay.