AliExpress price weirdness

Off-topic Chatter
17

The different price per country might also explain that thread here on BLF where some items required your login before you could view the page and others didn’t.

18

Hi Joshk, I'm sorry you didn't like Pricearchive. But there are inaccuracies in your words and incomplete information on my part that I would like to correct so that the community knows how things really are.

Honestly, it's really weird. The fact is that every day people check more than 1,000 goods on our website and in the browser extension. I'm sorry, I can't say a more accurate number, hope you understand. And I see that we don't have information for only about 10 of them. For example, in the last 19 hours a lot of items have been checked and only for these 6 items we didn't have data. These are the ids of the items you can now enter in the search on the site.

33037961705

4000667088526

4000631314882

4000730788322

4000029982273

4000710339444

Could you show me the goods you checked? That would be very helpful. I would also like to add that if you have checked the price through the website or if you have looked at the price chart of an item in the browser extension, we start monitoring the price for that item every day. If the purchase is not in a hurry and we do not track the price every day after other people's request, it is not a bad way to check the price history after a while. For example, if you know you are going camping in the summer, check the price today for a tent you like. At the time of purchase you will definitely have enough price data to make a purchase decision.

We do not track prices for accessories. We track only the lowest price for the item.

It's only true for a small number of goods. The fact is, only a small fraction of sellers change prices for buyers from different countries. That's what I wrote you about in PM. It doesn't mean we don't track prices for the USA. In most cases, the prices are the same for different countries. I didn't specify one thing for you. If the seller does set different prices for different countries, changes the price of the item, then the price almost always goes up or down for all countries.

Therefore, even if these sellers do not have the same price for your country, the dynamics of price change is still useful. You can see on which days the price is high or low.

And I have some very good news. After about ten days, a "Search by image" will become available. Pricearchive will begin to show how much the exact same item costs from other sellers right now and for the country that you specify. Of course, if such items exist.

Here's an example from our internal tests. If you want to find the same T-shirts from other sellers, the result will be about the same. The item ID is shown next to the picture.You can open these items on AliExpress right now. Just change the item ID on the link https://www.aliexpress.com/item/111111111111.html. For this example, the search was carried out only for 3% of the images that we have.

4000631631539 4000631631539 4000082998639 4000082998639 4000631631539 4000082998639 4000082998639 4000082998639 4000631631539 4000082998639 4000631631539 4000345004700 4000345004700 4000265278918 4000477149561 4000516820144 4000476958770 4000594958353 4000054022524 4000279232025 4000516820144 4000265278918 4000054022524 4000054022524 4000265278918 4000516820144 4000594958353 4000265689258 4000279232025 4000477149561 4000345004700 4000476958770 4000265278918 4000476958770 4000443177774 4000477149561 4000477149561 4000548215910 4000345004700 4000594958353 4000265833105 4000516820144 4000443177774 4000443177774 4000265689258 4000443177774 4000265833105 4000265833105 4000548215910 4000442239890 4000548293027 4000548215910 4000105306171 4000054022524 4000265833105 4000476958770 4000548215910 4000535186842 4000535344507 4000594958353 4000442239890 4000443177774 4000113459429 4000105306171 4000476958770 4000477149561 4000279232025 4000113459429 33053198911 4000420901805 4000320153198 4000548293027 4000054022524 4000442239890 4000265833105 4000055257460 4000313939182 4000442239890 4000477149561 4000320153198 4000239679529 4000265689258 4000345004700 4000594958353 4000345004700 4000548293027 4000279232025 4000586255389

19

I’m not on your R&D team, so this post is going to be minimal effort and time.

Untrue. When an item like a pen kit has three choices: Gold/Chrome/SpareBushing, you just track the price of the Spare Bushing because it is far cheaper than the Gold-colored Pen Kit, or the Chrome-colored Pen Kit. I previously described this issue, so I think you understand and just downplay it. It’s everywhere. A thermostat I tried to lookup had a choice for a spare sensor wire, so PriceArchive only tracked the price of the Spare Wire, nothing for the thermostat.

It’s been a week or more since I bothered to check price archive seriously, that’s why when it failed me again yesterday I removed it immediately.

You seem to think it’s working good enough, but I think your small user base proves people just aren’t having a positive experience.

20

Well. Perhaps I could help you in your situation and explain.

I’ll explain in more detail. When we receive the price of an item, AliExpress does not inform us that the item may have accessories. So I wrote that we do not track the price of the accessory on purpose just because it’s the cheapest. But sometimes what you wrote about does happen if the item has an accessory and it is cheaper than the item.

Yeah, it happens for some items. But I don’t think that’s a reason to write such a negative review with information that’s only true for a small part of the goods. I’m not downplay anything, I have statistics for millions of goods and constantly spend a lot of time researching.

Believe me, the number of users is not small. I can even tell you that there are people who use Pricearchive every day and have several accounts each of which tracks about 1,000 items.

As for people’s feedback, here are a couple of examples from recent times. Other people don’t confirm what you’re saying. I guess there’s nothing wrong with publishing them here.

Mon, 24 Feb 2020 18:58:51

你的pricearchive 插件太好用了，是我全网遇到的最好用的一个。这个插件有个意外的功能超出你想象。给你写一封邮件仅仅表达对你的感谢以及对此产品的喜欢。
期待新功能“搜索同类产品”早日上线（其他人这个功能做的实在太差了）
Thanks

Jan 30, 2020

Very helpful tool. Here is what I like.

  1. Such a great idea makes it so easy to buy at the lowest prices.
  2. The extension needs permissions only for Aliexpress and Pricearchive websites.
  3. Very detailed price charts with data for the last few years. I haven’t seen this anywhere else.
  4. Price charts can be seen in different currencies. I found the one I need.
  5. Convenient package tracking. It is really convenient and saves time.
  6. Everything is free and it’s great!

I repeat. I’m sorry that you see more minuses than pluses. It’s a pity that you don’t want to show the items you are talking about. You can send them to PM if you do not want to publish them here. If you agreed to show them, perhaps I could help you and improve the service exactly according to your feedback.

And again, perhaps you will like our “Search by image” for the same and similar items from other sellers.

21

Dude, there’s nothing I search for that I would be ashamed to make public. If I had a screen-recorder running on my PC last week when I gave priceArchive it’s last chance I would gladly upload that.
Here’s my most-recent orders on AliExpress:

Leaded Solder + Flux
Buck converter board
Voltage display board
AAA battery shrink wrap
LED strip
Metric power connectors
3amp fuses in bulk
TP4056 charger board

Like many on BLF, I am a DIY type person. I mostly buy parts for my projects on AliExpress. This type stuff shares product pages with odd variants.

22

That’s not what I meant. I was talking about data privacy no matter what the item.

Thank you so much for that information. I will try to figure out and find these items on AliExpress and see if there are any cases you mentioned and if there is anything I can do to improve the service.

23

There is one item I am watching price by writing it down.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32913137328.html?

Prices for cheapest option:
table(table#posts).
|Date|Price on page|Pricearchive price|
|26.2.|21.53|22.90|
|22.2.|23.90|22.90|
|18.2.|22.90|22.90|
|6.2.|23.90|22.90|
|4.2|22.90|22.90|
|1.2.|20.84|20.61|

So something is wrong there…

24

XXX-Man, This is just an example of the fact that prices for buyers from different countries may differ. Joshk wrote about this exact situation. Please change the country for delivery and you will see that the price is slightly different.

Honestly, these are the kind of situations where the price differs for different countries by about $1 for an item that costs about $20. I don’t think it needs to be corrected. That would not be bad, but so far I doubt it is possible to do so. You have to avoid these situations where the price changes very much
https://www.pricearchive.org/aliexpress.com/item/32844442426
https://www.pricearchive.org/aliexpress.com/item/4000466749748
https://www.pricearchive.org/aliexpress.com/item/4000131605470

XXX-Man, I remembered one thing that I had heard about before, but never tested. I heard that if you are logged into your account and check the price of an item several times in a row or several days in a row, then the price of this item can be a little more expensive just because of your interest in this item. It will be necessary to verify this. Then this may explain some points.

25

So how does Pricearchive make money to pay for itself?

26

Price is the same even if I open product in incognito mode with using VPN so no way they know what country I am from.

Interesting thing is another addon I just installed has exact same price history as I noticed, but different than you.

27

This is the Aliexpress affiliate program.
When someone follows a link to the Aliexpress website and then makes a purchase, Aliexpress pays a small commission for attracting a buyer. In this way, Aliexpress supports the ecosystem around its store. Usually it is 1-5. Sometimes 7 of the value of the goods. If you buy the item for $ 20, Aliexpress will pay about 20 cents to $ 1.4, depending on the category of the item. Most often it is 5%, that is, $ 1. If you buy on Aliexpress without clicking on the link before making a purchase, the price will not change for you.
There are goods for which sellers can give 90% of the commission but over the past 3 years there have been about 20-30 such purchases. And they all were cheap.
From February 20, the size of the commission is set by the seller. Previously, it was defined by Aliexpress and it was slightly higher. Now it has become lower. For approximately 20% of the goods, neither sellers nor Aliexpress pay a commission.

28

Could you please share the link to this extension?

Apparently they get prices from the Aliexpress website and their IP address is in the country where you are. If you look at the prices for your item for buyers from other countries, you will see that they are slightly different. Thus, for buyers from some other countries, their price charts will not be completely correct, as in your example with Pricearchive above. You are just lucky that they show the same price for your country. Check out other items if you have prices for them. In general, Pricearchive receives data from Aliexpress through their official API (Application programming interface). This is the only way that is allowed by Aliexpress. Aliexpress does not provide this opportunity to everyone. Apparently for the owners of your extension, Aliexpress did not give access to their API. It is not allowed to get information from the website because it creates a big load on the website due to the fact that when creating the page the page code, code of scripts, styles, etc. are generated. When using the API, there is no such load. I understand that this does not bother you much but I think you should know about it.

29

I just stumbled upon the difference between the item price on the search page and on the item page again. Can anyone explain what’s going on?
I enter https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=usb+metal+extension&ltype=wholesale&SortType=price_asc&page=1&groupsort=1
I see

I click on the second item and instead of $.33 it’s $1.5:

30

Price gone up suddenly on aliexpress. Shipping cost also increased tremondously.

31

I have noticed this as well. someone increased pretty much a lot of items and categories across AE. Same on Amazon (items in my card were moved to wish list or increased in price).

weird.

32

I noticed the same thing. Maybe they just don’t like us. I can’t imagine why.

33

Maybe our own user AliExpress collected all the responses from his thread and then they went…

“oh boy… these flashlight guys are annoying, they don’t like our search at all. let’s increase the stuff they need the most”

34

I was implying global politics.

35

I see that the Price Archive now requires me to click tracking links to use the site.
That’s a sad development. Goodby PA. :frowning:

36

Agro,
Let me clarify. The link you are talking about is not for tracking. We do not track the actions of our users, we do not associate IP addresses and we do not sell any information to third parties. We still do not require a phone number for registration and even an email is not required. All AliExpress price history charts, image search, tracking of parcels and search for goods with discounts - all this is still available without registration. That is, we do not have your personal data for any kind of tracking. If you are logged into your account and worry that we are somehow tracking you, then you shouldn’t. What’s the point of this? See what thousands of accounts are doing? It is not interesting. It is much more interesting to improve the service. For example, if before we tracked about 12 million goods every day, now we track about 33. This improvement was made about a week ago. The charts are getting even better. A little earlier, we began to show videos for those goods that you can find in the search results on Pricearchive. We are interested in this, but not in tracking our users and their actions.

If you meant an affiliate link by calling it a tracking link, then you’re right. A few days ago we offered this option to our users. This link does not appear all the time, but only once every 3 days. This was done as an experiment and may not always be the case. Perhaps you are against affiliate links? If not difficult, please explain why. If you follow the affiliate link, the price of the item does not change for you. This is 100%. If this were not the case, we would certainly not be conducting such an experiment. If possible, write your comment here. Thank you.