Super fast repricing AND prices higher?
Digging in to a particular item where we’ve recently had a low BB share, the seller taking most of the share has a very aggressive undercut strategy we’ve not seen before.
- Blazingly fast (25 seconds per update on average)
- Resets to a high price when prices go below some floor
- Floor price is dynamic
- If we use Amazon to rapdily undercut as well the price still steps down 1p, 1p, 1p, 1p
3rd party tools relying on Subscriptions and SubmitFeed APIs can only update prices 30 times per hour, once every 2 minutes on average.
Amazon’s own tools do not price upwards, stops repricing when a change is made through any other source (such as pricing higher), and can only be resumed from seller central. I also though this was supposed to go straight to the ‘end result’ of each seller’s rule if two people were using it.
So the question is… how?
16 replies
Seller_sdqgsruFYosSJ
I believe some are very fast, they advertise it as real time and ‘almost instant’.
Seller_z6B2L9xab6HlP
Due to the step down by 1p it’s clear they’re using an external repricer. Most do updates in 2-5mins, but some of them are nearly instant.
Seller_390A855lnDJhu
repricer express. you can have multiple profiles for multiple sets of products…
for example. can have a window of 1pm - 5pm when a profile is active. It will reset the price to the max and then drop until it reaches the minimum price. then at 5pm it will jump back up to the max price allowing for amazon to reprice as required. then at 6pm it will start repricing again…
I have used it and its fantastic.
Seller_0xGJSXj87hVAE
We might have to look at some of these tools.
If this is indeed a 3rd party tool it tells me we’re not fighting on an even playing field… the mechanism for near instant repricing doesn’t seem to be available to the rest of us using MWS APIs, or at least isn’t detailed.
Seller_xh61ZigKCE0GY
I have heard good things about a product called blackcurve, i have not used it myself but that seems to be the one i hear about making waves.
Seller_MT8rt0A2OpbCx
If everyone used repricers, it would be a race to no profit. 
Seller_1qKTBDbgtHefM
Scripts?
It’s not inconveibable that this seller is also a programmer and understands how to view the page, extract the price, and then instantly drop his below it by 1p.
Imagine sitting at the computer yourself and doing it manually. As far as I know there is no limit on how often yuo can change your prices. Imagine a robot sitting in your place doing the same job. It could do it 100 times faster.
Just a thought. He may have written his own program.
I once did something similar for a game many many years ago which read web pages to extract a specific piece of info and then used it on another webpage. It’s certainly doable.
