By Lan Jiang
Amazon.com, Jet.com, Ebay.com and Taobao.com, these e-commerce websites provide cheaper goods than that in the off-line stores. It is very often that those e-commerce websites providing a discount on some special festivals, such as Best Buy’s time-limited discount on the President Day.
However, a shrewd customer would find out some discounts are fake. For example, one designer’s official website provided a 65% discount on Feb 21, 2017. One of the bags is $214.8 after the discount with an original price of $358, which means it has a 40% discount. A clever customer knows that several days ago, this bag only costs $161 with another special day’s discount. If a customer buys the bag in $214.8, it means he/she lost $52.8, one-fourth of the price.
To help customers to save money, some price-tracking websites have been founded. For example, camelcamelcamel.com allows the customers to track price history on Amazon.com. With the help of these price-tracking websites, no matter how big the discount it seems to be, the customers know what to do. If customers have patience, they can get a good deal.
Lan Jiang is a student at Arizona State University.
