When a product price is displayed on the Where to Buy tool but the resulting retailer website displays a different price it can be a jarring experience for the end user. The reasons why a product price may differ include:
The data in MetaLocator has not been updated. MetaLocator tracks product updates based on historical observations of how often prices change, among other factors. Without a direct connection to the retailer, some price differences may occur.
The retailer is displaying different prices dynamically. Some retailers, including Amazon, Walmart and others employ dynamic pricing strategies that display different prices to different users based on factors like tracking cookies, a user's signed-in status, geographic location, browser version and so on.
Real-time Pricing models. Some retailers dynamically set pricing based on the demand of the product. Amazon does this in some cases. In this case, spikes or decreases in demand can cause a price to change quickly.
In all cases, MetaLocator must balance API limits, scraping limits and overall load to update prices as often as possible without unnecessarily burdening the retail partner.
To correct a price disagreement, updating the product is the quickest way to resolve the difference. Login to MetaLocator and click Retailers in the main navigation. Find the retailer in question, and click Update as shown below.
Update tells MetaLocator to update pricing for the currently matched products. In "API" Method integrations, an update is requested from the API for each product. In "SCRAPE" methods two actions occur. First the system updates based on the most recently available run from the scraper, then it triggers the scraper to run. This will ensure it's ready for the next update.