Is that Amazon deal really a steal?

During this year’s Black Friday/Cyber Monday shop-athon, I started wondering if the deals on Amazon.com were actually deals. Was this price the lowest the item had been or was I being duped into thinking it was because of the consumer-spending hype? With a little bit of looking, I found two websites that can help tell you the pricing history of an item on Amazon.

The Tracktor

There are a few sites that can track Amazon prices but a few have closed up shop because they’re no longer able to be an Amazon Affiliate in their state or because Amazon changed their policy on giving price adjustments for purchases. The Tracktor is the first site that I found that was still fully functional. The homepage is simple and straight to the point. You enter the product name, ASIN, or Amazon.com URL to the product you’re interested in tracking and hit the ‘Go’ button.

With a successful find, Tracktor will show you your item and some detailed information about it so you can confirm that it’s the product you’re interested. More importantly, it will show you the price and how it has changed. You can see a graph of the product’s price history for both new and used items over the span of 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, or the product’s lifetime.

You can optionally have The Tracktor e-mail you when the item reaches a certain price point. Seeing the graph of an item’s price can tell you if you’re purchase is coming at the right time or if you’re better of waiting for it to return to a lower point.

The Tracktor has a page called ‘Movers’ that will show you products that have recently dropped in price, sorted by the item that has dropped the most in price. This can be a great resource for snagging bargains. The Tracktor also has Firefox, Chrome, and Safari extensions that can be added to your browser so you can see the price graph and configure e-mail tracking for an item directly from the product page on Amazon.com.

CamelCamelCamel

CamelCamelCamel is very similar to The Tracktor but is different in just a few ways that make me actually prefer it. The homepage is a bit busier but it shows you the ‘movers’ right away. You can see the Top Daily Drops in price or by percent and the top weekly drops in price or by percent. You can also use CamelCamelCamel for different localized Amazon’s like Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK, and the US.

To track the product you’re interested in, you just paste the Amazon URL or some keywords to find it into the search bar at the top of every page.

On the individual product page, you’ll see the price history graphed out over a 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, 1 year, or the product’s entire lifecycle. You can customize the graph to show 3rd party new or used items. You can see product details, which will also inform you of how many other people are tracking this item. You can easily setup a price watch so you get an email or a mention or direct message via Twitter when the price is at or below the desired price you set.

I also like the table that CamelCamelCamel presents below the graph. It shows you the current price along with the highest and lowest prices and when those peaks were reached. It also shows you the last 5 price changes so you can possibly see an increasing or decreasing trend in the price to help you make a smart purchase. CamelCamelCamel provides an RSS feed to an item’s last 5 price changes so you can get that information right in your RSS feed reader.

Other features of CamelCamelCamel include Firefox and Chrome extensions so you can see the price graph right on Amazon.com. You can also optionally create a free account so you can manage your price watches. You can import your wishlist and CamelCamelCamel will automatically setup price watches for any items that you haven’t purchased or received.