Amazon is changing some things… mostly for the better.
Amazon recently overhauled their Coupons and Deals sections. Most of the changes are for the better, but it’s not all roses.
The big change, and one that’s long overdue – much better ability to drill down to individual categories. Before this update it was impossible to browse coupons or deals in just “our section” – Additive Manufacturing. The best you could do is the parent section of Additive Manufacturing which is “Industrial and Scientific”. Industrial and Scientific is actually a cool section containing some popular stuff like magnets, electrical connectors, etc. But it also contained a bunch of junk from sections like Janitorial, Restaurant supplies etc.
After the overhaul, it’s now possible to just select Additive Manufacturing, and it’s subsections like 3D Printing Filament. This makes it much easier to snipe the relevant deals. And it’s not just coupons….
As part of the overhaul Amazon included the ability to flush out deals marked as Overstock. And just like with coupons, it’s now possible to drill down to the individual categories, making it much easier to find deals in relevant sections, like Additive Manufacturing, etc.
These are the good changes… now let’s get to the bad.
After the overhaul, it’s no longer possible to see upcoming deals in the Deals section. The checkboxes for “Live” and “Upcoming” are gone, and so are “Lightning Deal” and “Best Deal”. The live deals are now all mushed in together, with no way to separate them, or tell what’s coming up. The 3’rd party api i’m using for the schedule posts is still working… for now, but it’s also starting to show some bugs. For example – today’s schedule is only showing 2 Lightning Deals, which is possible, but highly unusual. Typically i would check against Amazon’s Deals section to see if that’s correct, but that’s no longer possible.
Coupons are not all there… which is kind of a big thing. This new interface has been live for a couple of weeks now, and during those couple of weeks the old interface still worked (i had it bookmarked), so it was possible to use both at the same time and compare. I can tell you with a 1000% certainty that the new interface doesn’t pick up all the coupons. In fact it misses a whole bunch of them, including some big ones like 50% off etc. There are at least a couple of 50% off deals i have saved in my cart right now that i picked off the old interface, when it was still working a couple of days ago (stopped working yesterday), that are simply nowhere to be found in the new one. Overall, it seems to ignore some brands entirely, making me suspect that this will end up a “select brands” type of thing.
Search box is gone… which is not that big of a deal for now, because it’s still accessible through a direct link. Only way to search coupons (by brand or seller name) is through this little search box that used to be displayed on the coupon section home page. That search box has been removed, but luckily i had the link to it bookmarked, so…… still works for now, but again – for now. The fact that they removed all ways to access it from their interface is a sign that it’s not long for this world.
Order summary will look different in posts. One of the changes is the way Amazon displays totals in cart. There is no longer a “total before tax” line, so when i copy paste totals from cart to posts it will include NY taxes. Not a big deal, but annoying…
I’m sure there are more changes that i missed, but this is already starting to become long, so i’ll save them for “next time”.
Does this also mean, though, that less random crap I didn’t know I wanted will catch your eye?