This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.
Non private mode on left. I am not logged in but have cookies enabled. Right is private mode.
Sometimes there are vendors or distribution rules that require that they don't post discounts publicly so people can't price match or other retailers can't demand a discount to match.
That's a weird logic. If I cannot find it on price comparison sites, the offer doesn't exist.
It's not too uncommon for PC equipment. Back when Newegg was a good company, before they were bought out over a decade ago, there would be quite a few items on there that were like this.
Well you'd be in the minority so they don't care.
That's an odd definition of non-public if the information is available to everyone. More like annoyingly public.
I reloaded the page and it showed up.
Don't get that card. I used to have it but it would randomly output max volume static... Not a fun experience.
Had the same thing with a Xonar DX, probably got some permanent hearing damage from that.
MM yes. Thanks.
Dude it’s $3 an ounce. Totally worth it.
lol I didn't notice that.
On the right it has a rough shipping location (LA with zipcode), are you sure that's not the change?
You know maybe it's because I'm on a VPN. Testing out anti-botting methods?
Or trying to filter out price scrapers
Anti-botting or rough shipping calculations being factored in, both fairly plausible. I notice on the left it even prompts to "select delivery location" near where the price would be.
Amazon is a big POS
Yes, that is the purpose of s shopping website. One big Point of Sale
Go to bed Dad
No. The manufacturer has a minimum advertised pricing policy in place. Amazon has the item priced below this point. So they can only display the price after it's been added to the cart.
The neat part is - amazon is still a POS
That is just to condition you to get accustomed to eventually having to buy it first before they let you know the price.
Which again is just to condition you to accept the fact that next they will be able to increase the price on your existing completed purchase each month for rest of your life.
It's only in the best interest of the consumer, it's not an evil tactic.
/s
I've noticed convenience stores in my area just stopped putting out price tags.
Oh, that's illegal here. Nowadays they mostly transitioned to those wireless e-ink tags anyway.
I'm pretty sure that's illegal in a lot of places. I know some stores have the "if you have to ask you can't afford it, boutique" vibe going on, but they do actually have to put the prices somewhere.
Sounds more like an inconvenience store to me.
I would straight up rather not have most things than give money to Amazon at this point. They're only going to get worse.
This has been common for ages. In lots of stores.
Yeah, like, decades. It basically means whatever agreement they have with the supplier says that they can't advertise for under MSRP. This is not a thing that's unique to Amazon.
That's because of restrictions/contracts with the manufacturer. Sometimes there is a clause about the minimum advertised price. If it's being sold below that price, that's what you'll see.
However, that clearly isn't what's happening- or if it is, then Amazon is violating those terms. They are showing the price in some circumstances, but not others. That leads me to think it's a smokescreen, using the above as an excuse.
More likely, the price changed between screenshots.
We don't know what the price is on the left.
I had it worse. I needed to book a hotel for a business trip, and they offered me two prices: Either take them cheaper, but you cannot cancel or get a refund, or you can spend a bit more, and cancel it up to one day before arrival for a "cancellation fee", which amount was not disclosed at that moment.
I booked the latter one, and in the booking confirmation it said that the cancellation fee is exactly the same as the cost for the room!
That’s dumb. I used to work in hotels. We hated online bookings because of how terrible those sites handle expectations. A tip for the future is: If you find yourself wanting to take that latter option, odds are it’s the same as booking directly, price-wise. If you book directly, you’re more guaranteed and only have to deal with their own policy. Usually it’s no fee if cancelled the day before arrival. If cancelled same day, a one-night fee applies for holding the room. If you cancelled the day before, could’ve saved.
Amazon's customer experience has been on a very steep decline in the last 5 years or so. I find myself shopping more and more on Temu and AliExpress.
Why on Temu?? That is basically enabling scammers.
Just shop on Ali where you actually have some buyer protection...
Sidenote are sound cards making a comeback?
So much that we're buying them by weight now
Just buy an external DAC
As a hobbyist musician, the more you externalise these sorts of things, the more latency you create. A discreet, internal, soundcard is probably going to trump external DACs for a long time to come.
External DACs totally have their place, music playback, movies/shows. But for doing audio work, internal is the way to go.
As a professional musician and someone who works for a prominent Japanese electronic musical instrument company, I’m going to have to disagree.
Thunderbolt provides all the low latency of a PCIe interface with none of the drawbacks. I use an Antelope Zen Tour in my home studio and it is just amazing.
The systems I designed for work though use RME PCIe cards, but those systems aren’t in the hobbyist space.
Wtf is a gaming sound card!
A sound card is a device you add to your motherboard if for some strange reason your motherboard doesn't have the ability to play sound already. I have literally never heard of anyone needing one since about 1995.
Maybe it's for a retro system? It's not exactly expensive.
A lot of motherboards cheap out on their audio. I had one that had a lot of EMI in the line in and swapped it out for a 30$ card like this and it cleared it up so people would stop telling me my mic sounded like shit lol.
Apparently having a dedicated sound card and high end audio equipment can improve the quality of the sound. You can chalk it up to audiophile stuff.
I actually had to add a dedicated sound card to my PC because the onboard one shat itself and died somehow, and it was way cheaper than a new motherboard.
Back in the day, they were the only way to get sound out of machine, except the internal speaker but that only said beep