Barnes & Nobles prices are the same for all, whether you're a first time buyer or one who has been buying from them for years. They don't base their price on which operating system or which browser you use. You can put an item in your shopping cart and return three days later to find that the price is the same. They don't check where you live or what your spending habits have been to determine if they should set a higher or lower price for you. If this changes, a new supplier will be found.

Amazon is a bit more complicated. Their system allows for price fluctuation through dynamic pricing. They tried this in 2000 and were greeted with an uproar when customers discovered that the same DVD was sold at different prices to different people. This year there have been several articles about this happening again:

• Amazon mystery: pricing of books by David Streifield of the Los Angeles Times, 2007. It can be read are here and here.
• Citizen Journalism Bites Into Amazon's Attempts At Dynamic Pricing by Mike Masnick of TechDirt, 2007
• The silliest, and most destructive, debate in journalism by Robert Niles of Online Journalism Review, 2007

Previous articles:

• On the Web, Price Tags Blur by David Streitfield of the Washington Post, 2000
• What Price Fairness? (PDF) by Paul Krugman of The New York Times, 2000
• Why I stopped shopping at Amazon.com: A reading expert sounds off... by By Mark Hochhauser, Ph.D. of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 2000
• MP3 player "sale" exposes Amazon's flexible prices by Troy Wolverton of CNET News.com, 2000
• Strange price hikes hitting my Amazon.com cart by Fernando Cassia of The Inquirer, 2005

LKH's webmistress has seen this herself. She notice Amazon had a yogurt maker she was interested in purchasing. Towards the end of June 2007, the item was $16.99 so she placed it in her cart. Two days later, it was up to $19.99. That's a 17.65% increase in price over a two day period. A week later it was down to $14.99. For those keeping track, that's a 11.77% decrease from the first price and a 25% decrease over the second. Three and a half weeks later the price was $20.13! That's an 18.48% increase over the 16.99 price, .7% increase over the $19.99 price and a 34.28% increase over the last price of $14.99. The manufacturer's site was selling the product for $14.99 so this wasn't due to fluctuations in price from the manufacturer. Niles thought it was seasonal based on what he saw in his associates report. What happened here wasn't seasonal. It looks more like what Steitfield described: they had me so they increased the price, they lost me so they decreased it.

We realize some out there don't have an issue with dynamic pricing. However, we do so we don't feel comfortable pointing users to Amazon for that reason. We think it's unethical to charge different prices for the same item. Like Krugman, we question whether it's legal. Dynamic pricing may be good for Amazon but we feel it's nothing more than price discrimination for the customer.

In case you happen to be one of the folks who have gotten caught paying a higher price on Amazon, there is a catch: if you find a lower price on Amazon within 30 days of purchase, they will refund you the difference. See Amazon's Secret Price Guarantee for more details.