Hyper Gumbo

I’ve been buying a bunch of toys with the make-up bonus, and noticed some interesting things with Amazon.com and sites that at first blush aren’t associated with them at all.

The first toy I wanted was some filters for my cameras.  I’d found a company that sold thru amazon’s marketplace, called 47th Street Photo, who seemed to be the sole US retailer for an asian optics company called Opteka.  Their own e-commerce website had a larger selection of products, and better prices on some things, but significantly worse prices on other things, so I ended up making two orders, one to 47th Street Photo, via Amazon, and one directly from the Opteka website.  As I get order confirmation and shipping emails about both orders, I notice that they are identical, except for the company name.  In the end, all the stuff arrived and works perfectly, but I find it amusing that I seem to have saved about $60 just by making two orders instead of one, and that both ended up processed by the same facility anyways.

The second toy I wanted was a melodica.  When I placed the order, amazon said “in stock”, delivers in 4-6 weeks…which seemed kind of odd, but the price was right, and the shipping was free.  Two months later, they send me an email saying it could be another 2 months before they ship, and do I want to cancel.  I go online and find the same melodica, from some place called American Musical Supply.   I order one from them, and it arrives two days later.  Thing is, it seems to have shipped, if not from an Amazon facility, at least from some sort of generic fulfillment center that Amazon uses.    Amazon now lists the melodica as “out-of-stock, unknown when new stock will come”.