January 25 2008

Find hidden discounts

A US site has built an online search tool to find the biggest discounts on Amazons worldwide sites.

Here at IR we like a good discount, particularly any discount that has two figures so we were intrigued when we received a press release about a new US website called deallocker and the “Secret Amazon Discount Finder” which it claims to uncover “Amazing Discounts on Popular Products” So we just had to check it out .

If you go to http://deallocker.com/tool/secret-amazon-discount/ choose the Amazon site you want UK, US, Canada, Germany and France, then pick a keyword and brand then pick your ideal discount range - say 50-70% off – then click on “Find Amazon discounts”, up comes all the items in Amazon that have been reduced.

While to the non-techies it looks like DealLocker has discovered some sort of hidden back door, however if you look at the URL it produces it’s not rocket science at all, and it just merely creates a normal search on Amazon but with the parameters you entered earlier.

While this will probably do wonders for Amazons long tail, we’re not so sure that it’s such a good thing for anyone else, unless you’re already part of Amazon Marketplace. However having used the tool for a good 30 minutes it takes all the fun out of online shopping, and turns Amazon into the online equivalent of a car boot sale with pages and pages of stuff you would just never buy.

by Marcus Austin (Web Editor)