Brian shopped for a webcam on Amazon and faced this confounding pre-checkout screen.
He writes:
It’s wrong on so many levels. First they say regular price is 79.99 and you get a discount of $60.00. Somehow the price comes out to $39.99 and they count that as 50% off. When added to cart, it says 99.00 is the regular price. I’m so confused.
Hopefully Brian nabbed the miscalculated deal at $39.99, because last we checked the item had shot back up to $99.99.
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Math is hard.
Don’t you say anything bad about my sweety, Amazon. She’s the reason I have to set foot into Walmart only once or twice a year, and can avoid Best Buy completely.
Agreed! I love Amazon. Great prices, and whenever I have a problem they are nothing but helpful.
Amazon has single-handedly allowed me to enjoy Christmas season again. a couple days after thanksgiving i sit at the computer for an hour or two and voila. shopping done. without having to spend all day battling moms at the mall
Same here, but due to Amazon not offering cheap 9mm and .22 ammo, I still frequent Walmart, unfortunately.
Hang out on Slickdeals.net and you’ll never need to buy ammo in a brick and mortar store again (assuming you live in a free state).
Indeed.
It’s no coincidence the webcam resembles the evil steering wheel from Wall-E…it’s trying to make us so bad at math that we become fat, lazy idiots.
I’m not an idiot, steering wheel!
It’s $79.99 when I look at the link in the article. Not $99.99
Taken 1:45 pm
http://easycaptures.com/fs/uploaded/438/7848508208.jpg
This is also known on the You Suck at Craigslist site as “cat math” – so $39.99 is 50% of $79.99 but that $60 number is from the fact that the full MSRP of the webcam is $99. So Amazon mashed all the numbers together.
THIS! They do that with almost every deal to make it sound much better. Good article to make people aware, but to those that already know, Amazon does this all the time
Original (MSRP) Price – $140
Regular Selling Price – $99.99
Sale Price – $79.99
Gold Box 50% discount – $39.99
Total Savings – $60 ($40 from Gold Box + $20 from Regular Selling Price)
Brian and Consumerist needs math lessons, not Amazon.
see @Loias, above.
Amazon needs to be a little more clear, cuz that $140 is listed nowhere on that screenshot.
This reminds me of the scene in Paper Moon where Tatum O’Neal scams the drug store clerk by asking her for change.
yay!
Where is the original price not stated though? (I couldn’t even find that $140 anywhere). Makes sense when you type it out, but whats actually on the screen (without knowing about the $140 or $99 even) makes it kinda confusing.
you win
Gold Box discount is listed as 60, so I’m not so sure.
Who proof-reads Amazon’s stuff?
I don’t ever shop at Amazon… I shop at easystreetdeals.com instead…
Um, you mean a Woot rip-off site with one of its only products being a jolly roger flag?
Who the hell would pay $80 for a webcam?!
Those who claimed the 83% of the allotted stock.
List Price: $79.99 to amazon.com
Gold Box Price: $39.99 to amazon.com
Gold Box Discount: $60.00 to customer (sort of)
Cost of Webcam built into my Mac: One Soul to Steve Jobs
It is stupid to get pay that much for a webcam.
Do the right thing and buy a cheap point and shoot camera that can be detected as a capture device.
A 6-8 megapixel $50 crappy point and shoor camera easily offers many times the quality of even a $100 webcam.
Webcams use a very small image sensor and a very small lens. in order to provide a bright image at a usable framerate, they rely on a very high ISO (light sensitivity). High ISO on a small sensor adds a large amount of noise so a lot of noise reduction is done. this is why on many camera phones and web cams the image is not as detailed.
take a 1.3 megapixel web cam image, and compare it to the quality if you were to set a 5 megapixel digital camera to 1.3 megapixels. you will see that the digital camera offers much better color, dynamic range and detail.
many point and shoot camera allow you to use them as a web cam and when that is done, you will get much smoother video as the larger sensor can offer good detail and framerates even in low light.
The cameras can also be run for days on end with no problem (tried it before for time lapse footage)
Sorry for the typo, consumerist still doesn’t have the option for editing comments.
I think the 79 was just a mistake, but then the gold box bases it’s percent off what the original price is.
Or they had the discounted price chosen, and forgot to update the discount amount to go with a lowering in the original price.
As for it being 99 in cart, that’s gold box standard – discount won’t show up til later.
You’re making these so much more complicated than it needs to be. The list price was mistaken and is supposed to be $99.99 (as stated in post). Magically, $99.99 – $60.00 = $39.99.
The 50% off, I’m guessing, is coded into the site as the Gold Box Price divided by the List Price. And if Amazon changed the List Price, the Gold Box Price would read 60% off.
Voila!
I just checked the link given and the price says $79.99, $69.00 with the discount. At least it isn’t as bad as Verizon math.