April 04, 2007

Discounting software

I was looking for a way to upgrade my current email to a .mac family pack. Surprisingly, there are certain restrictions on converting accounts but even more surprisingly to me, the service is highly discounted. It appears that discounts go up to 50% if you go through one of Amazon's associated resellers. You can only find Amazon's price if you start going through the motions of buying it.

Apparently there's agreement that Amazon can sell for what it likes but it can't advertise what it likes. There's some sort of "minimum advertside price" (MAP) that they get around by simply teasing you with the idea that you have to put it in your cart to find out the price. Odd, a timewaster, and it must increase the number of abandoned carts that Amazon's software has to deal with.

Posted by TMLutas at April 4, 2007 07:45 PM