Amazon Prime Day has become a destination for shoppers looking for great deals. Price drops can be significant — sometimes more than 40 percent off an item — but without knowing the product’s price history, it’s impossible to know if a deal is indeed deal. Consumers have long used third-party price tracking tools to fill that gap, but now Amazon says it will let some users access that information through a quick chat with its AI shopping bot, Rufus.
Take, for example, this week’s deal on the LifeStraw Personal Water Filter. As part of Prime Big Deal Days, the filter was available for $10, half off its original price of $20, and it looked like a steal. But was it really a bargain or was the price even lower? Until recently, the company didn’t want to tell you. But in recent weeks it has quietly begun testing greater transparency. Gaining access only requires using Rufus.
Launched for some users in February and for everyone in the US in July, Rufus is Amazon’s shopping-focused answer to ChatGPT. It’s accessible from the bubble icon at the bottom right of the Amazon app or at the top left of its website navigation.
Some early reviews described it as unreliable and only moderately useful. Rajiv Mehta, Amazon’s vice president of search and conversational shopping, wrote in a blog post last month that users have been inundating Rufus with questions about product details, recommendations on what to buy and how items compare. Rufus can also answer questions about errands or the meaning of life.
What Mehta didn’t mention was Rufus’s price history capability. Go to a product page, tap Rufus and prompt it with “price history”. In the case of the Lifestraw filter, Rufus wrote during this week’s sale: “This is the lowest price on Amazon in the last 30 days.”
Photo: WIRED Staff
Courtesy of Amazon
In the Amazon app, Rufus also presented a line chart showing the price of the filter over the last month. It revealed that the price was below $20 throughout the period and as low as $14 for a few days. So the offer price was a bargain, yes, but perhaps not as big a discount as advertised by Prime Big Deals Days.
Amazon spokeswoman Janelle Rasi says revealing price history is an experiment available to a limited number of US users. “We strive to make customers’ lives better and easier every day, including helping them find and discover everything they want and make informed purchasing decisions in our store,” she says. “We regularly test new features to help customers get great value across our wide selection.”
LifeStraw did not respond to a request for comment.
