Interestingly enough, if you go to http://www.amazon.com/Criterion-Collection-Eclipse-Akira-Kurosawa/dp/B003N2CVQ8/
the camalizer shows up – it seems to actually be a part of the amazon page (that’s how I stumbled on this site – I never knew what it was before today!). I checked on both IE and Chrome and on two different computers – it’s definitely part of the page.

Someone at Amazon messed up. I would suggest you guys request they remove your content from their pages :P

Somehow, one or more Amazon product managers embedded the Camelizer into a handful of product pages. We’ve let them know, but it seems nobody has moved to fix it.

Wow this sucks that amazon dosn’t like your plugin.

I buy hundreds of dollars of merchandise from Amazon every quarter because of their competitive prices and good service. But I also like to know that the price is not temporarily too high before placing an order. Otherwise I go to other vendors. Amazon and I both benefit from my being able to check with CamelCamelCamel for price assurance and I’m going to ask them to put it back online.

IMHO that is short-sighted of Amazon. I am not impressed by Amazon’s behavior. They lead online retailing by a large percentage so are hardly dependent on your services, but this leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak, as your service is an excellent way to keep track of price variation. I don’t see how this could be harmful to Amazon – I think it actually enhances. I just discovered it and was finding it very useful. There are other retailers out there and according to my research, Newegg, QVC, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Best Buy, Staples and Walmart are huge online sellers. Some of those I like better than others, but I will switch my discretionary dollars from Amazon to them.

I think this solely has to do with the extension adding your associates tag to links on Amazon.com pages. Earlier this year, they changed the Associates Associates Program Participation Requirements to prohibit including associates tags on Amazon’s site and using software to change tags:

“24. You will not include any Special Links in any content that you place on the Amazon Site (for example, in connection with any advertising service available through the Amazon Site or in a customer review, forum, listmania, guide, or any other customer-generated context available on the Amazon Site). ”

“26. You will not attempt to intercept or redirect (including via software installed on users’ computers) traffic from or on, or divert advertising fees from, any site that participates in the Program.”

They did not like our tagged “add to cart” link in the Camelizer popup, and they closed our account immediately after we added it. It goes along with the clause about modifying their site, as well as the one about Special Links which you’ve posted. Whether or not that is considered intercepting is dubious, as we are providing a (useful) service to Amazon customers who choose to install our add-on.

Someone at Amazon is an idiot; your extension is something THEIR CUSTOMER has chosen to add. Therefore they are screwing with THEIR CUSTOMERS – not with you.

If they had half a brain, they would have tried to solve the ‘legal’ issue, instead of screwing their customers. But, then again – the larger Amazon gets, the worst they treat their customers. As an exam0ple, their free shipping policy includes sitting on the item(s) for 5-7 days. So their pages YELL ‘free shipping’ – but it’s ‘free shipping’ with a MAJOR penalty! So don’t be surprised by the fact that they found another way of screwing their customers, by killing your browser extension.

best,

a.

It’s helpful to realize that Amazon is not a monolithic organization. That is, the legal department may be overruled by other executives on this issue IF enough customers make the point that we want CCC’s price tracking app to continue to be available. A short polite letter to the president often makes things happen. Even though Jeff Bezos is not likely to read our letters, his personal staff will. And these folks can make things happen by virtue of the being able to say “Jeff wants . . .” Here is the address that will get our letters where we want them to go:

Jeff Bezos
Amazon.com
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

You can also Email Jeff Bezos via ecr@amazon.com

This is just another nail in the coffin for Amazon. First they kill POPG. Then they sit forever on SSS orders hoping folks will cave and get Prime. Next is the across the board price increase on MP3’s. Now they are playing games with their price points using a lot of odd numbers. I’m assuming that they are hoping that doing so will make it hard for people to remember the price history. To top it all off their prices are no better than anyone else anymore, sometimes worse. My orders from them have dropped 90% over the last year. Now this garbage with making me take extra steps to see histories makes me sick and will only further my dislike/distrust of Amazon. It also makes me wonder what has changed at the top of the food chain at Amazon. Is someone different in charge there?

Email sent to Bozo, er, Bezos… Doubt that it will do any good, but I told him to personally monitor my order frequency and to watch it go down. I will continue to watch prices using the Camelizer on his competitions websites!

Also just sent a short email to Bezos. (below)

Hi,
I just wanted to say that I’m disappointed Amazon decided to prevent the ‘camelizer’ extension from allowing customers to track prices on their website. This isn’t consumer-friendly at all…especially in a recession where people are trying to save money. I’ve been a long-time customer and have several products in my ‘wish-list’ which I’m hoping to eventually buy. It’s almost hypocritical given the fact that Amazon has their own extension to ‘Add-To-Wishlist’ virtually any product on the web.
Please don’t turn into ‘Big Brother’

Also, OP…I don’t think many of your users know that it was disabled. I’ve downloaded the extension several times hoping it was a bug….and the comments indicate that people don’t realize this was Amazon’s doing. Perhaps you could put a notification on the extension link. You do have 15K users.

joegrind: thanks for the tip, I’ve updated the plugin pages to reflect that Amazon is temporarily disabled.

I’ve sent an e-mail off to Mr. Bezos as well. While I came to the camelizer late it has been immensely helpful. I am disabled and do most of my shopping online. I used the camelizer addon heavily to help me track and compare prices so that I don’t waste money that I don’t have. I’m hoping that perhaps after some modifications that the camelizer will return. If there is anything that users can do to help please post and let us know.

Well, that explains why it’s not working!!! I’ve been re-installing for days. Kind of sucks. I spend A LOT on Amazon…think I’ll send an email!

I haven’t read the TOS, but any “injection” was done in my browser, by my choice. How can their TOS cover that?!

How about a bookmarklet that opens a new tab with the corresponding ccc page?

tlc a bookmarklet would be nice. I’m also coding a new Camelizer extension as we speak, hopefully that will be a functional replacement.

….At least they have enough decency to reply with their standard emails (reply below). Let’s see some democracy!

Hello,

Thanks for your suggestion about Camelizer extension. Customer feedback like yours is very important in helping us continue to improve our website and services. I appreciate your thoughts, and I’ll be sure to pass your suggestion along.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Just sent this email to Bezos. Unlike most folks, I am sort of expecting an answer or some action… As I spend a LOT of money there:

Dear Mr. Bezos,

I hope this email finds you well.

As a long time Amazon customer who– along with my family– literally spends TENS of THOUSANDS with your company every year– I would really appreciate your re-enabling the Amazon Camelizer plug-in for Firefox.

I cannot begin to tell you how many items I have purchased using this valuable info– items I most likely would have NEVER purchased without it.

Please feel free to check my account to see what I spend with you. If you would like to follow-up and see thousands of dollars of other purchases I am also responsible for on a yearly basis… I would be happy to provide that info as well.

Please reconsider and re-enable this valuable Amazon pricing tool.

All the Best,

I’m sure everybody knows this already, but you can still get price histories by going to camelcamelcamel.com and pasting the URL of the product into the search box, then clicking on “price history.” It’s obviously not as convenient, and I’m mad at Amazon too for disabling something I chose to use on my own browser. I’ll be ordering everything I can from Newegg until they come to their senses!

And I did receive a response!

Here’s what I got 2 and 1/2 hours later:

From: ecr-replies@amazon.com
Subject: Your Amazon.com Inquiry – Camelizer Addon
Date: June 17, 2010 12:47:38 PM PDT

Dear _______,

My name is Peg Anderson of Amazon.com’s Executive Customer Relations team. Jeff Bezos received your e-mail and asked me to respond on his behalf.

Thanks for your comments about Camelcamelcamel. We’ll consider your feedback on this matter.

Customer feedback like yours really helps us continue to improve our store and provide better service to our customers. Thanks for taking time to offer us your thoughts.

Please feel free to contact me at ecr-replies@amazon.com if I can be of further assistance.

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

Regards,

Peg Anderson
Executive Customer Relations
Amazon.com

May mean nothing… But it was awfully nice and hopefully hopeful.

Bookmarklets for ccc are out there. I’m using one now that I found with google.

Used program for a long time now. Amazon continues to deteriorate.

Removal of 30 day price protection
Won’t honor claimed Lightning Deal items

plenty i’ve forgot.

if you move to another vendor or site please keep us informed. Camel.camel.camel is a necessity since they can lower prices on an hourly basis, and won’t consider it if a price gets cut ion half before it ships.

Man, I just found camelizer pretty recently and it was becoming very helpful! Hope there’s a way to resolve this.

I did find that many of the offers of the week were not actually that good and often the price had gone up recently before it came down.
Very suspect behaviour, maybe they didn’t want their tricks to be exposed so easily.

It looks like it is working today!

Unfortunately that is a mistake on my part and one that I will be fixing shortly. However, I am also releasing a new version of the Camelizer today that will work with Amazon (and play by its rules.) Look for a new blog post within the next hour or so with details on that tasty Camel action.

Sorry for the mixup!

My wife and I both use this, she with Firefox and I with Chrome. I just let her know that the Firefox extension is working again for Amazon. I checked to see if the Chrome extension is working again but it is not. Any idea when it will be?
Thanks for the help and keep up the good work.
Darcey

Darcey: The Chrome extension is next on our list, though I’m going on vacation for a couple of weeks starting next week so it might be a little while before that comes out. It’s probably at 30% completion at the moment…