Welcome!

Dan · 05-11-2008, 11:28 PM

Hi, this forum is for the posting of bug reports, feature requests, questions, comments, and anything else regarding camelcamelcamel.com.

What is the tri-camel? It is a simple tool for tracking products on Amazon.com. The master CamelBot monitors Amazon pricing and availability and emails you when products you want are available for the prices you define.

That's the semi-concise description, I guess. Even more concise: camelcamelcamel is a project I am working on in my spare time because I find it interesting.

If you also find it interesting, I encourage you to use it and post any of the aforementioned postables to this forum. I tend to keep a close eye on these forums, so your requests could be implemented (or your bugs fixed) pretty quickly if you take the time to make a thread!

Most humbly,

Dan

PS - thanks to nithya! she is/has been the primary tester/idea giver/whip cracker of this project.

Dan · 05-14-2008, 02:44 PM

By the way, you needn't register for the Camel forum. You can give feedback anonymously!

LOSER · 05-18-2008, 03:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan

Hi, this forum is for the posting of bug reports, feature requests, questions, comments, and anything else regarding camelcamelcamel.com.

What is the tri-camel? It is a simple tool for tracking products on Amazon.com. The master CamelBot monitors Amazon pricing and availability and emails you when products you want are available for the prices you define.

That's the semi-concise description, I guess. Even more concise: camelcamelcamel is a project I am working on in my spare time because I find it interesting.

If you also find it interesting, I encourage you to use it and post any of the aforementioned postables to this forum. I tend to keep a close eye on these forums, so your requests could be implemented (or your bugs fixed) pretty quickly if you take the time to make a thread!

Most humbly,

Dan

PS - thanks to nithya! she is/has been the primary tester/idea giver/whip cracker of this project.

Cool! Does this also work with Amazon.de (or any other country's amazon domain) or just with Amazon.com?

Dan · 05-18-2008, 11:21 AM

Yes it does! You can change your locale by clicking the flags at the bottom of the page, or by going into your Profile and setting your default locale.

Try this link for Amazon Germany: http://de.camelcamelcamel.com/

Nithya · 05-29-2008, 06:24 PM

I like the new price point tracking summaries. Pretty interesting to see how much people are willing to put down for a product and also helps one in gauging how much a product is actually worth.

(I'm telling you that here since I was told to do so)

Btw, could you mark the desired price on the graph next to the blue line? That would be nice, I think, since the only place our desired price gets displayed in otherwise is in the tracking info box.

PS - you're welcome!

Dan · 05-29-2008, 10:23 PM

Having the desired price on the graph is a good idea.

Smike · 05-30-2008, 01:23 PM

This is just so great. It's really really great.

I'm not referring to the new feature - that's good too, of course - I mean the site. I mean this idea, The Camel. Triple Camel. Tri-C.

Up, down, up, down, up, down. Three Humps.

The Even-Toed Ungulate Party of Three;

Tri-Dromedarius, Duke of All of Camelus and The Mountains of The Amazon;

The Magnificent Three: Amazon Explorers of Most Excellent Reputation and The Mighty Conquerors of The Vast Forest Beyond;

Eved-Toed Ungulates, Lords of Brazil;

The Llama Avengers;

HUMPS!! OH?! WHY SO MANY HUMPS!? (?);

The Camels: Great Westward Travelers of The Endless Dawn;

Mark, Johnson, and Pete: Personal Injury Attorneys On Your Side - Involved in a Llama collision? An Alpaca threatening suit? We're Dromedary Attorneys who will work for you to get things done. "With Mark, Johnson, and Pete, you never pay until WE WIN!";

Lawrence of Camelia: The Amazon Adventures (starring Omar Sharif as Sharif Abu-Even-Toe Ali);

And of course, the title of the original Beta site:
"CamelusDromedarius-CamelusDromedarius-CamelusDromedarius.com"
(which I'm just going to hazard a guess is not currently registered).

Oh yes, few sites in or out of the Amazon Jungle are as useful as this one. I LOVE IT! I LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT IT! I AM IN LOVE WITH THESE CAMELS - IS THAT SO WRONG???

Dan · 05-30-2008, 02:09 PM

No that isn't so wrong. Not at all!

cryptomail · 05-30-2008, 02:12 PM

You're among friends.
*man shake*
Welcome, friend.

Smike · 06-01-2008, 07:36 PM

Oh good! I was worried.

You know, I was just thinking that it would be awesome if I could set the price points and track all three prices (New, Third-Party New, Used) simultaneously.

* ducks flying rocks *

Yeah. I really have no idea what degree of difficulty that would be or what it would entail or how it would look, I just think it would be wicked awesome. But I'm thinking - because the site does not currently work that way - perhaps it's a bit of an effort? So this is not a request, then. Everything's pretty awesome as it is.

BUT:

Implementing Simultaneous Multi-Variant Price Tracking (SiM-VaPT?) would make things, you know, like...
* Michael Bay-Awesome. *

- Smike

Marketing · 06-01-2008, 09:20 PM

So you wish to inoculate the camels with the SiM-VaPT virus?

I will see what can be done and call the lab.

Dan · 06-01-2008, 09:21 PM

It is only an interface issue as the underlying code already supports such trackings.

(mostly)

Dan · 07-10-2008, 07:02 PM

You can track as many products as you like!

Dan · 07-24-2008, 09:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dak

I have a completely off the wall question: Why Camels?
Does it have to do with Amazon using Mason which is based on Perl? Even so, I don't get the 'tri' part. (For those unaware of the association, O'Reilly technical books depict programming languages in association with an animal. Perl is the Camel.)

On a more serious note, what happens if Amazon decides they don't like bots crawling their site and mining real-time price data? Don't get me wrong, I think Tri-Camel is something I could really use, but most high traffic sites have policies against automated usage of their resources.

i actually bought the domain before creating the site, and just thought it was long and annoying to type, but also memorable. 'tri-camel' is just an easy way to refer to the site, like an abbreviation or nickname...

ccc uses the amazon api and conforms to their request limit policy of one request per second. i try to be as nice as possible to their site.

tinkler: thanks, i hope its useful for ya

Dan · 07-29-2008, 10:52 AM

Hi AnonBloke, c3's average update time (including both when we update all products and when we update only tracked products) for July is about 30 minutes. If your product was purchased by someone else before that time, it would probably not have shown up.

I like your "hot mode" idea, seems worth investigating.

Dan · 08-07-2008, 09:22 AM

not yet, but there could be at some point.

10-29-2008, 06:10 PM

I was geeking out at work and the boys figured I could program something that tracked Amazon prices since we were noticing things that we left in our checkout cart were changing (sometimes drastically) every time we went on. I was debating what language to use, and how much of my life I was going to dedicate to this task when I started the first step any good programmer takes: googles to make sure he is not reinventing the wheel.

Anyway, thats how I came upon your site and so far I love it. Thanks, and I will start spreading the word on my end.

Dan · 10-30-2008, 09:24 AM

Awesome, thank you

Glad you like it!

And glad I coded first, googled later heh.

Nanciejeanne · 12-08-2008, 05:59 AM

Hi, great site!

I like the top items on the home page very much, but wish there were more. Is there a way you can look for "top droppers" in different categories? Like click jewelry and you can see the top 10 (or 25) price drops there. Or sporting goods, toys, etc.?

Just a suggestion that would probably make me come here before amazon! Thanks in advance for considering my suggestion.

OR (just thought of this) list, say 200 items and we could sort by category or percentage, similar to the way you can sort the specials on amazon's gold box page. I don't know much about programming, so this may be difficult. I just thought it would be nice.

Dan · 12-08-2008, 12:35 PM

Howdy! Thank you

Part of the giganto update I'm working on at the moment is the product browser, which sounds just like what you're suggesting! Not only will you be able to search Amazon directly, but you'll also be able to browse our product database and filter the data all sorts of ways, including Top Drops and other lists.

Keep your eyes peeled! I'm working hard to launch these updates soon.

01-13-2009, 09:12 AM

Holy Flaming Codpieces, Batman! This tool is fantastic!

Dan, you are a god that walks amongst us. Thank you!

Dan · 01-13-2009, 12:20 PM

Well shucks, CheerfulWilf! You are too kind

I'm no god, though! You can find them over in the REAPER forum.

03-13-2009, 03:34 PM

Found your site a few days ago and have been tracking price drops for the Samsung LN52A650. Today, thanks to your price drop notification, I got one ordered for $1649, plus a few bucks shipping.

Just wanted to say "thanks", it sure was worth my time hecking out your site.

Dan · 03-13-2009, 05:49 PM

I'm really happy to hear that. The camel led you to an oasis.

03-14-2009, 01:36 PM

It's still a great site, but readers should know the $l649.00 ultra-low price was a fraud. The seller bailed on me and probably a number of other buyers as well. Wish Amazon had a better screening process for their new sellers.

Dan · 03-14-2009, 01:58 PM

That's no good, Unregistered

There is probably a way for Amazon to refund your money, no? Some kind of mediation system has got to be in place for this kind of thing.

edit: or was it a bait and switch?

03-14-2009, 04:56 PM

Amazon says it did not charge my card, and there was absolutely no correspondance from the 3rd party seller - basics4home. Frequent checks on the amazon Samsung TV site, showed the seller changing the number of tv's that were available changing frequently, fewer then more, fewer then more. No bait and switch, I think just an out-and-out fraud attempt. I doubt they ever had any to sell. The price was too good to be true, I should have known better.

03-14-2009, 05:01 PM

As an aside, this experience has greatly diminished my confidence in Amazon. They really should screen their 3rd party sellers better. It wouldn't hurt for Amazon to offer the same item at a reduced price to buyers who were defrauded. I probably will not purchase the TV through Amazon now, and will just look elsewhere. Just my humble opinion, and venting my frustrations and anger. Thanks.

Dan · 03-14-2009, 06:24 PM

If your card wasn't charged then what is the harm? Amazon did its job and protected you, hard to ask for anything more I think.

05-25-2009, 05:09 AM

HI. Love the idea, but so far it isn't working for me. I get a black chart with "chart unavailable" when I do a search. I can't find any fix in the help section.

Help?

Dan · 05-25-2009, 02:33 PM

That means the product you are tracking was only recently added to our list, as the charts only show up if there are 2 or more price changes. So if you lookup a product no one else has tracked before, it's likely that you have just created the initial price point!

Keep checking back, once we collect more data (in the coming days/weeks) the graph should appear. Maybe even sooner if the price changes a lot!

Sounds like I need to make this more clear on the site.

05-26-2009, 12:23 AM

I have been using my shopping cart as my wish list because I get a message when a price changes on an item in my shopping cart, but not items in my wish list. So now I have nearly 400 items in my shopping cart (including several duplicates).

I sure wish I could import my shopping cart from Amazon into my wish list at C3. Then I wouldn't have to go look every day just to see that several items have changed by a penny.

Another feature I'd like to have is setting all my watched items to notify me when they are down 25% percent, rather than having to set a price for each one with the default to -$.01.

Dan · 05-26-2009, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cmarkn

I have been using my shopping cart as my wish list because I get a message when a price changes on an item in my shopping cart, but not items in my wish list. So now I have nearly 400 items in my shopping cart (including several duplicates).

I sure wish I could import my shopping cart from Amazon into my wish list at C3. Then I wouldn't have to go look every day just to see that several items have changed by a penny.

Another feature I'd like to have is setting all my watched items to notify me when they are down 25% percent, rather than having to set a price for each one with the default to -$.01.

I believe you can move your shopping cart into your Amazon wishlist, which can the be imported at C3. Right now that import will track all products at (current price - $0.01), but I can look into defining a % prior to import!

cmarkn · 05-27-2009, 01:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan

I believe you can move your shopping cart into your Amazon wishlist, which can the be imported at C3.

I asked Customer Service about it. They say "Currently we do not have the feature to add the items directly from shopping cart to wish list."

Dan · 05-27-2009, 11:01 AM

Sorry, I confused "save for later" with the wishlists.

I'm not sure what the best way to import those would be. Keeping 400 items in your shopping cart is kind of outside the realm of normal use, though

07-21-2009, 03:44 AM

Hi there,

I am a marketing student and I've been working on a paper about how online price monitor services like your great site market themselves. I really don't know if you can give out any information but I'm curious to know how quickly you grew with respect to new users and how exactly you went about promoting your service. Can you help Dan?

Many thanks and keep up the good work