Amazon bargain watch: Never pay full price again!

 

  • Amazon bargain watch: Never pay full price again!

    Posted by Huw, 10 Sep 2011 14:13. Filed under Shopping (UK).

    Amazon.co.uk has some great reductions on LEGO but they are often hard to find and short lived. So, to take the guesswork and frustration out of finding and taking advantage of them, we've teamed up with DrDave at GimmeLEGO to bring you a new feature here at Brickset.

    Our new Amazon Bargain Watch page lists EVERY set that's reduced at Amazon.co.uk and is updated four times a day. What's more, when sets are reduced by more than 30% a news article will be posted automatically, giving details of the savings.

    At the moment this only provides information for Amazon.co.uk. In a few days we'll have it up and running for Amazon.com and eventually hope to include Amazon.fr, Amazon.de and Amazon.it.

    Nobody likes paying full price for their LEGO, and now if you stay tuned to Brickset, you won't have to.

    We hope you find this useful: let us know what you think...


    46 comments, latest one posted 20 months ago. (Commenting has ended on this article)
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Comments

Posted by LostInTranslation in United Kingdom, 10 Sep 2011 14:31

Excellent, this will really save time & money. Actually, no, it'll prob cost me a bundle but i'll be happy to grab some bargains!

Btw, just a little typo in "retrieved"...I before e and all that... :-)

Posted by Gandalf1 in United States, 10 Sep 2011 14:39

Awesome!

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 10 Sep 2011 14:41

^^ Where is it, I can't see for looking?

Posted by LostInTranslation in United Kingdom, 10 Sep 2011 14:46

Under the bit, "prices last retrieved on..."

Posted by LostInTranslation in United Kingdom, 10 Sep 2011 14:47

^ Under the bit, "prices last retrieved on..."

Posted by LostInTranslation in United Kingdom, 10 Sep 2011 14:47

^ Under the yellow bit, "prices last retrieved on..."

Posted by JamesBenjamin in United States, 10 Sep 2011 14:50

omg. this is awesome. I can't wait till the US version is live.

Also: the "automatically posting a news story" is the best part. Especially to those of us who subscribe to the site's rss feed. =)

Posted by stelek in Poland, 10 Sep 2011 14:51

It would be so cool if I could also filter it by Lego themes. I'm interested only in City, Creator and Star Wars so the Ninjago discounts are pure spam to me.

Is the "Prices last retreived at..." showing my time zone?

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 10 Sep 2011 15:04

Nice feature, but... I simply don't like automated news articles. :( I think this'll make us lose touch with Huw and Co., slowly but surely... :(

EDIT: Where's the LEGOShop.com banner? It seems as if the Amazon banner has replaced it...

Posted by JonnyRonny in United Kingdom, 10 Sep 2011 15:08

Huw I would take this feature off if I were you or amazon will bulk there prices back up like what happened with Earth Dragon Defence.

Posted by Zackula in United States, 10 Sep 2011 16:14

I think this will be useful. I just bought the gateway of the squid from amazon for under USD20

Posted by jonbuddy in United States, 10 Sep 2011 16:16

THAT IS AWESOME! :D

Posted by ETAV8R in United States, 10 Sep 2011 17:17

How do you do an RSS Feed?
Doing this will put the discounts on your page w/o having to search?
TIA

Posted by Si_Dorking_Surrey in United Kingdom, 10 Sep 2011 17:38

DrDave (+Huw) great work!! This is brilliant, and makes a change from following the 'discounted amazon' thread on the forum.

Posted by Super Robot Wars in Ireland, 10 Sep 2011 18:02

DrDave and Huw thank you so much, this is awesome. I just hope the brickset effect doesn't occur ;).

Posted by Leela in Poland, 10 Sep 2011 18:23

I love it! Thank you so much :)

Posted by legofanatic2414 in United States, 10 Sep 2011 18:30

Wait, this is for USA to? Or not?

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 10 Sep 2011 18:46

Hm, one thing: LEGO will hate you now. :P They will get less money now. :P Be careful. :P

Posted by Savage_Steel in United Kingdom, 10 Sep 2011 19:13

I'm pleased that my forum thread provided the inspiration to you and Dave for a pretty nifty feature. The only thing is, it would be useful to be able to comment on it, as often a price can look good on amazon, but there's still a better price out there. Especially at the minute with the recent price hikes at amazon, Play.com is much, much cheaper in comparison (for now anyway, I'm sure they'll match amazon soon).

Posted by Zacherano in United States, 10 Sep 2011 20:07

This is awesome! Thanks so much Huw! I've been hunting for deals on Amazon for years now, but it's a pain to do it manually every once in a while, and I usually don't find the best ones.

@Alemas - You are definitely right about that one. We better watch out and keep giving Lego their due. At least for the summer Star Wars, though, I think it's a fair protest to buy them from Amazon with free shipping and discounted rates as I did a few weeks ago once I found the best deals....

Posted by itsaturkey in United States, 10 Sep 2011 20:55

Alemas- Don't worry, I'm pretty sure this automatic poster is just going to be for the sales. So that we the brickset users get more info on great sales and it some of the strain of Huw and Bluemoose and the rest of the amazing brickset crew.
P.S. Huw you should go into marketing, you really grabbed me in with the, "Never Pay Full Price Again." :)

Posted by Captain Blockbeard in United States, 10 Sep 2011 22:56

This sounds like a fantastic feature, and I look forward to using it when it becomes available for the US!

Posted by jarom_moroni in United States, 11 Sep 2011 01:46

You love us, Huw. Just admit it. That's why you're doing all this great stuff!

Posted by guildfordmatt in United Kingdom, 11 Sep 2011 04:04

Superb feature. Thanks very much.

Posted by splifdfx in France, 11 Sep 2011 04:11

Fantastic feature. Could you expand it to other countries ? Amazon.fr and .de would be nice to have too. Thanks anyway.

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 11 Sep 2011 04:34

^ This is just for Amazon.co.uk at the moment. Amazon.com will be added in the next few days and Amazon.fr and .de will follow in the next few weeks. There's quite a lot of preparation needed to get each country up and running but we are committed to doing it.

Posted by lego_nutt in United Kingdom, 11 Sep 2011 04:38

I SECOND MOST COMMENTS ABOUT THIS FEATURE - IT IS SUPERB...GREAT JOB!!!

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 11 Sep 2011 06:59

Huw, here's a difficult question: Did you add this feature just to help users, or to earn some more money? Even the Argos banner needs some explanation...

@itsaturkey: I don't want automatic articles at all, whatever they do. :(

Posted by jwsmart in United States, 11 Sep 2011 07:14

Excellent. Can't wait for the amazon.com page.

Posted by richardwsales in United Kingdom, 11 Sep 2011 08:22

Fab - Many Thanks.

Posted by legomaniac in United States, 11 Sep 2011 09:47

Thanks, I shop at amazon.com a lot, just not so much for LEGO because of the prices. That might change soon :)

Posted by Thomson & Thompson in Canada, 11 Sep 2011 09:48

Great job, Huw and Dr Dave, but what about Amazon.ca? Will you include that too?

Posted by spency13 in United States, 11 Sep 2011 10:47

This is wonderful! Thanks Huw and DrDave!

Posted by DrDaveWatford in United Kingdom, 11 Sep 2011 11:19

^^ We're not planning on including Amazon.ca because it appears they don't sell LEGO themselves - all the sets listed there seem to be sold by third parties at prices well above the RRP. For example, Set 10188 Death Star is almost twice RRP at $899.99 CAD + $49.99 shipping... You'd be much better off buying direct from LEGO by the look of it.

Posted by brickupdate in United States, 11 Sep 2011 12:10

Wow - I love this! Thanks so much for adding such a useful feature. I track the sales pretty closely, and it's nice that sometimes it is easier to just grab a set at a random 30% discount at Amazon (with no tax or shipping), then try to be working these TRU deals where I need to buy 3 items to qualify, then average out the savings.

Great work!

Posted by BJMdotLEGO in Belgium, 11 Sep 2011 12:38

Excellent work. A very useful feature.

Posted by The Cobra in Italy, 11 Sep 2011 13:18

You did an excellent job.
As for ".it", take it easy. Prices were great when 2011 sets first came out (30+% off), but over the last we months they were brutally raised. That's why I have been buying on .co.ukm and your feature will help me a lot!

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 11 Sep 2011 14:59

@Alemas, I am happy to answer that difficult question.

You will notice that the site carries no advertising at all. However it does cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to maintain, and in order to keep it free for everyone it has to generate some revenue. It does this via affiliate marketing, as we have discussed before.

I am always careful to ensure that the marketing features I add to the site add value to you, the site's users, and do not make the it difficult or horrible to use [1]. It sounds as if the Amazon Watch page is going to be very valuable to users, so if it provides a little extra income then everyone's a winner.

[1] you just have to look at Brickipedia to see what a site is like when that happens!

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 11 Sep 2011 15:36

@Huw: So, it's a bit of both, then?

Posted by flump in United Kingdom, 11 Sep 2011 18:44

I've got to say, a big well done and thank you to @DrDaveWatford and @Huw. I think it's a fantastic idea and will be yet another IE 'favourite' I'll be adding to the many LEGO related ones I use hourly....I mean daily....at lunch times - sorry boss!

Just one question if I may? Within the listing, you display using a traffic light system the prices going up or down from the previous day. Is there a way perhaps of tracking the price changes over a longer period, say six months or even twelve? We could perhaps be provided a button allowing us to view the price increase/decreases in a table or graph form. It could assist us in providing an insight as to when it is best to snatch a particular set. I don't know the first thing about computer programming so please forgive me if what I've suggested is completely outrageous.

Posted by Thomson & Thompson in Canada, 11 Sep 2011 19:48

@DrDave - All right. I understand.

Posted by jonbuddy in United States, 11 Sep 2011 20:09

@flump6523, Even though I'm not a computer "programmer", per say, I believe that is possible. May take a few individual webpages, though. Let's see what Huw and the others have to say.

Posted by Savage_Steel in United Kingdom, 12 Sep 2011 03:14

@flump6523 what you're suggesting already exists in camel camel camel - which can be installed as a add on to your browser, and then when you're on amazon you click the little camel and it gives you the graph you describe. So certainly it's possible and incredibly useful for working out what really is a bargain. It would be fabulous to have that functionality within brickset!

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 12 Sep 2011 16:25

Graphs and price trends will be shown in due course. At the moment, with just a few days' worth of data, they wouldn't be that useful, so expect to see them in a month or so.

Posted by sinfanti in Taiwan, Province of China, 12 Sep 2011 20:21

This just rocks. I have a lot of saved searches for Amazon and other sites. The one thing I haven't been able to make is a search that shows items ranked in descending order of percentage off. It's like my letter to Santa got delivered to Dr. Dave. Thanks!

Posted by icey in Denmark, 15 Sep 2011 05:16

Thanks alot! What a sweet feature! Out of curiosity... Who's main programmer-brain(s) behind this database?

Commenting has ended on this article.