So my cousins wedding is coming up in like three weeks and I really want to get her this specific Breville Bambino espresso machine because shes a total coffee nerd but I only have about $350 saved up for it. I keep checking Amazon and every single day there is a big red badge saying 25% off or limited time deal and it says the list price is like $450 but the price I actually see is $340. I did a bit of digging and found out about these price tracker sites like CamelCamelCamel and Keepa which are cool i guess but they kinda make me more confused? Like I looked at the graph for this machine and it shows the price has been $340 for the last six months straight so is it even a discount at that point?

I read somewhere that Amazon uses something called dynamic pricing where they just inflate the original number to make the current one look better but then I also saw a thread saying that the list price is set by the manufacturer and Amazon has to follow it or whatever. It feels like a total shell game honestly. I dont want to buy it today thinking I got a steal only to see it drop another fifty bucks next week because Prime Day is coming up or something.

Ive tried a couple things to verify this stuff:

• checked the price history on Keepa
• looked at other sites like Wayfair to see if they have the same list price
• waited a few days to see if the limited time thing actually expires (it didnt)

But the thing is even those tracker sites show different typical prices sometimes and I am just sitting here wondering if I should pull the trigger now or if I am being tricked by a fake strike-through price. I live in a pretty rural area so I cant just run to a store to compare in person easily so I am stuck with whatever the app tells me. How do you guys actually verify if a deal is real or just marketing fluff?