It's pretty common that those overpriced books on Amason are simply controlled by bots and they get set like that by accident. I believe it is a case of the bot setting the price against another bot, and they keep going up a penny or two. It's been around for a long time, randomly overpriced books.
I totally believe you because there are so many weirdly overpriced things on Amazon. So I'm not trying to be argumentative. But why would the bot go UP a penny?
I'm no expert but I've messed around with ecommerce a little bit. I think they were called autopricers. There are some sellers who purposefully price things a little higher. Ebay and Amazon are full of these auto postings. I'm not saying one way or the other on Wayfair. I don't know much about the site or this whole issue. The naming seems strange to me, for sure.
This other guy sounds like he has more experience with it than me.
I used to do e-commerce websites a long time ago. There are several explanations for something randomly being insanely overpriced.
Placeholder prices. Sometimes something like $9,999.99 is just a placeholder price. No one notices it because it's not a popular item to begin with, and a few yearly price increases where you just increase all prices by x%, and that placeholder number is now $10,825.42 or some other weird looking number.
Actual typos. Not all companies have nice excel spreadsheets with SKU and prices that have been checked by dozens of people. Sometimes it's printed or otherwise in a format that either has to be manually entered or run through ocr software. Forget a decimal point or accidentally mistype a SKU and it's very easy to see something at a crazy price. Anyone who has used ocr software knows that it's maybe 95% accurate on a good day. $333.00 can easily become $83800 for example. Sure it's easy to notice a mistake if your inventory has 50 items. On a site with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, that mistake may possibly never be noticed. Especially if it's a very niche item to begin with. Even now I'm sure there are countless product pages on Amazon, eBay, and the like with exactly 0 actual human views
Maybe the children were named after the furniture. Has anyone ever considered that?
I did a search for similar items under the designers' names to see where else these are sold. Prices on other sites range to $2,500. Besides the unusual names there were common names used for their furniture as well.
Ok, now explain these factors: they're all the same brand shelf, with the same photo listed from 10-15k. Not only that, but they each have a unique name with a unique spelling and it just so happens to match the name of a missing person.
It wouldn't be a good criminal cover anyway if it wasn't something you could kind of explain away real quick and delete the listings, now would it?
Yeah, I've messed around with ecommerce a little bit. Not to say this Wayfair thing doesn't seem strange. It does, but I haven't looked into it much. This just seems like a case of the issue where people familiar with the field see that it's not too outlandish while it appears very bizarre to those unfamiliar. Sounds like you're a lot more experienced than me, so your explanation is probably the correct one.
I just remember this issue with outlandish prices coming up in a video probably 3 or more years ago, and from what I remember it was something to do with bots or autopricers. It could be a variety of things. It does seem strange with the naming on these items, for sure.
It's pretty common that those overpriced books on Amason are simply controlled by bots and they get set like that by accident. I believe it is a case of the bot setting the price against another bot, and they keep going up a penny or two. It's been around for a long time, randomly overpriced books.
I totally believe you because there are so many weirdly overpriced things on Amazon. So I'm not trying to be argumentative. But why would the bot go UP a penny?
Yea doesn't make sense. Like theyre competing to be more expensive than the competition.
I'm no expert but I've messed around with ecommerce a little bit. I think they were called autopricers. There are some sellers who purposefully price things a little higher. Ebay and Amazon are full of these auto postings. I'm not saying one way or the other on Wayfair. I don't know much about the site or this whole issue. The naming seems strange to me, for sure.
This other guy sounds like he has more experience with it than me.
https://thedonald.win/p/GIc36OL2/x/c/13zzjsNd3M
I used to do e-commerce websites a long time ago. There are several explanations for something randomly being insanely overpriced.
Placeholder prices. Sometimes something like $9,999.99 is just a placeholder price. No one notices it because it's not a popular item to begin with, and a few yearly price increases where you just increase all prices by x%, and that placeholder number is now $10,825.42 or some other weird looking number.
Actual typos. Not all companies have nice excel spreadsheets with SKU and prices that have been checked by dozens of people. Sometimes it's printed or otherwise in a format that either has to be manually entered or run through ocr software. Forget a decimal point or accidentally mistype a SKU and it's very easy to see something at a crazy price. Anyone who has used ocr software knows that it's maybe 95% accurate on a good day. $333.00 can easily become $83800 for example. Sure it's easy to notice a mistake if your inventory has 50 items. On a site with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, that mistake may possibly never be noticed. Especially if it's a very niche item to begin with. Even now I'm sure there are countless product pages on Amazon, eBay, and the like with exactly 0 actual human views
Maybe the children were named after the furniture. Has anyone ever considered that?
I did a search for similar items under the designers' names to see where else these are sold. Prices on other sites range to $2,500. Besides the unusual names there were common names used for their furniture as well.
Check out Stretch Armstrong over here
Ok, now explain these factors: they're all the same brand shelf, with the same photo listed from 10-15k. Not only that, but they each have a unique name with a unique spelling and it just so happens to match the name of a missing person.
It wouldn't be a good criminal cover anyway if it wasn't something you could kind of explain away real quick and delete the listings, now would it?
Yeah, I've messed around with ecommerce a little bit. Not to say this Wayfair thing doesn't seem strange. It does, but I haven't looked into it much. This just seems like a case of the issue where people familiar with the field see that it's not too outlandish while it appears very bizarre to those unfamiliar. Sounds like you're a lot more experienced than me, so your explanation is probably the correct one.
I just remember this issue with outlandish prices coming up in a video probably 3 or more years ago, and from what I remember it was something to do with bots or autopricers. It could be a variety of things. It does seem strange with the naming on these items, for sure.