News

Amazon's Price Check helping customers or helping itself to customers?

December 6, 2011

Amazon is touting its Price Check app as a service to customers, while others see it as an attack on brick-and-mortar retailers.

The app, according to Amazon, allows shoppers to make sure a deal is really a deal. Consumers use the app to scan an item at a brick-and-mortar location to see if they can find the product at a lower price online. The online retailer is now taking it a step further, giving customers who use the app an additional 5-percent discount (up to $5) off Amazon's price on up to three qualifying products in eligible categories, including electronics, toys, music, sporting goods and DVDs.

"The ability to check prices on your mobile phone when you're in a physical retail store is changing the way people shop," Sam Hall, director of Amazon Mobile, said in a company press release. "Price transparency means that you can save money on the products you want and that's a great thing for customers. Price Check in-store deals are another incentive to shop smart this holiday season."

The whole idea is unethical, according to Ryan Tate of Gawker.com.

"This gives Amazon valuable intelligence on how various retailers are pricing various items," he wrote in a recent post. "Amazon won't have to work so hard in the future, since hordes of consumers will (theoretically) sell out the merchants who pump sales taxes into their localities with sales taxes, all to save a measly five bones."

The Price Check by Amazon app is available for iPhone and Android and can be downloaded for free from the Amazon Appstore, Android Market and App Store for iPhone.

Read more about online retailing.