The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning

Ed Nisley's Blog: Shop notes, electronics, firmware, machinery, 3D printing, laser cuttery, and curiosities. Contents: 100% human thinking, 0% AI slop.

The New Hotness

  • Amazon Unit Pricing: Go Ask Alexa

    I long ago learned to never trust Amazon’s unit pricing (or, for that matter, their recommendations), so this came as no surprise:

    Amazon unit pricing - hose per ounce
    Amazon unit pricing – hose per ounce

    OK, you generally don’t buy hoses “by the ounce”, but “per fluid ounce” may not mean what you think it means:

    Amazon unit pricing - cups per ounce
    Amazon unit pricing – cups per ounce

    Pricing items individually should be simple, if you know what a single item is:

    Amazon unit pricing - batteries per each
    Amazon unit pricing – batteries per each

    Even knowing the number of items and the overall price isn’t enough for Amazon to get it right:

    Amazon unit pricing - just plain wrong
    Amazon unit pricing – just plain wrong

    Amazon now has a “shopping assistant”, so I asked Alexa why the unit prices were incorrect. After some back-and-forth providing details Alexa should have known from the context, this seemingly plausible sequence of words emerged:

    Amazon unit pricing - ask Alexa
    Amazon unit pricing – ask Alexa

    Amazon apparently stopped commingling knockoff crap with brand-name products under the same SKU earlier this year, a change driven by major brands refusing to have anything to do with Amazon’s “supply chain”, but the probability of my one-by-one reports producing any discernible improvement seems low.