Is Amazon Prime to Hawaii really worth it?

[Midnight Rambler]

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Originally posted by knieft

That said I have been rethinking Amazon lately. Still getting an absurd range of stuff from them, but starting to wonder if I am falling for something untoward. I used to think that Amazon was "Walmarting" Walmart, which I viewed as progress. Now with the recent unpleasantness with publishers, and the realization that it isn't just staples that are available on Amazon, but nearly every niche of esoteric merchandise as well...well, they pretty much have the potential to put every goods seller out of business. Not services, but I can _always_ find a part online, and usually from Amazon, that beats anyone selling locally.

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True, though most of what I get there is things that can't be found locally - which is quite a lot. The issue with the publisher, Hachette, was more complex than it was often presented in the media; basically, it was two types of wannabe-monopolists competing to screw each other in trying to eliminate their competitors. Amazon wanted to sell e-books for less, in order to increase its market share (a crucial thing when the book format is proprietary to the reader sold by them); Hachette wanted to sell e-books for the same price as paper ones even though they cost nothing to produce individually, since people already seem willing to pay that price (but the extra was going to them, not the authors). Neither was really the good guy there.

One important thing to keep in mind about Amazon is that their prices fluctuate constantly. You'll see this if you put something in your cart but don't buy it right away; when you check it later there will often be a notice saying "The price of item X has increased/decreased from...to..." Sometimes it's just a few cents (I have no idea why they do that), but sometimes it's quite a lot, and sometimes a low price only lasts for a day.

If you don't need something right away, there's a site called camelcamelcamel.com that tracks Amazon price information. You can set it to email you an alert when the price drops below a certain level. For example, here's one of those 4500w generators mentioned earlier; currently at $510, it started out at $650, but was down to $390 for a few days last June:
http://camelcamelcamel.com/DuroMax-MX450...B002S5PP28