I was looking today to purchase a camcorder. Earlier this morning, I found what I think is the camera for me over at Amazon. They have the common, "See price in cart" and don't show the price. Fine - so I add it to my cart and it's $975 (yikes!). I have a small video training company - LearnItFirst.com - and, although I hate to spend so much, I will get a ton of use out of the "prosumer" quality camera. Before I pull the trigger though, I want to read a few full-blown reviews so off I go to the search engines.

After reading a few reviews on other websites, I'm back to Amazon and ready to buy. I'd removed the item from cart - I didn't want to accidently buy it - and so I revisit the page only to find two oddities:

1. No longer does it say, "See price in cart" - the price is listed and has risen $24 to $999.95
2. The seller is a different seller than the previous

Hmmmm - back to Amazon's search engine... The camera is only listed once... So I click the page and there's my camera - same price point this time ($999.95) but a new seller.

F5 - new seller

F5 - new seller

(In case you aren't aware, hitting the F5 key in your web browser refreshes the page)

I've been a member of Amazon Prime for four years straight now and this is the first time I've seen this. I'm not usually trying to figure out the whole "system" Amazon has but this was pretty obvious.

Breaking News

As I was writing this post, I went back and hit F5 again and this time I get the, "Only 1 left in stock--order soon" notice. Huh? There must be at least five or six vendors in rotation yet only one of them has it in stock? I don't believe you, Amazon.

What is the purpose of all of this? I don't know - I'm trying to understand it myself. One product, one price, yet multiple vendors and now I'm being told that there is only one left...

I don't know that I have a point with this post either - just that I was somewhat baffled by this. In the end, I'll probably end up buying from newegg or B&H since this has been a bit weird.