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• Prices change on Amazon all the time.
• camelcamelcamel tells you about a product's price history.
• You can set an alert for when a product's price drops to a number you would pay.
Amazon is the greatest shopping website in the world. But there's one feature I didn't notice at first: the prices change.
Changing prices can be a good thing. If you pre-order a book and the price fluctuates, Amazon will give you the best possible figure. But more often, I have the nagging feeling that I could be spending a lot less on something, if only I was purchasing it at the right time.
That's where camelcamelcamel comes in. It's a website that tracks the price history of everything on Amazon. Using it, you can see if you're purchasing a product when it's near its historically lowest price, or near its highest.
You can also set price reminders for a product. So if something costs $25, and you see on camelcamelcamel that it occasionally drops below $15, you can ask camelcamelcamel to send you an email when the price drops to $15.
It's particularly useful when you need or want something, but not urgently. Take my backpack, for example.
When I was in my senior year of college, my backpack was getting worn out. It also wasn't a great fit for the professional world that I'd soon be entering. I decided that I wanted a new backpack, one that would be stylish enough for my remaining months of college and also professional enough for my post-college workplace. I also wanted it to be durable, so I could use it for years.
I eventually settled on the Fjallraven Rucksack No.21 Backpack in a dark olive color. But it was way more than I wanted to pay for it.
So I looked it up on camelcamelcamel by dropping the Amazon URL in the website's search bar.
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As you can see, the item's range of prices is huge. At its cheapest, the bag cost about $94. At its most expensive, it cost $175. The chart also includes the item's current price. Right now, it's at $170, about the most expensive it's ever been.
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Above the graph, if you're logged into camelcamelcamel, you can ask the website to send you an alert when it's at your desired price. It offers several price suggestions for you, based on math, and even works if you want to buy the object from a third-party seller.
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Using camelcamelcamel, I got to buy the backpack I wanted without breaking the bank. I paid less than $100, which is about 60% of the maximum price I could have ended up paying.
And it's perfect. I got a lot of compliments, and I even got hired at INSIDER after wearing it to my interview here.
You can check out camelcamelcamel here.
Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.