Price tracking and rewards, in the right order

When we read Amazon’s own deal-event page for this guide, one thing stood out about the deal tiles: Amazon's own deal tiles label the struck-through comparison price two different ways — "List:" on some items and "Typical:" on others (Amazon — Black Friday page, verified 2026-09-15).

Those two labels are not the same claim. One is a reference price supplied for the product; the other is a statement about what the item has recently been selling for. Amazon uses whichever it has for a given item, which means the struck-through number on two adjacent tiles can mean two different things.

None of that is a scandal. It is simply a reason not to treat a percentage next to a strike-through as the answer to “is this cheap?” The number that answers that question is the item’s own price over time.

The third and fourth rows are the ones worth adding to your setup, and they are free. Keepa is the best-known of the browser extensions in this category; its published description is that it adds price history charts and the option to be alerted on price drops to all supported Amazon sites (Keepa — Chrome Web Store, verified 2026-09-06). We are naming it because it is verifiable, not because we have a relationship with it — this site is paid by Amazon signups and nothing else, which is set out in full on our affiliate disclosure.

The practical routine takes about three minutes per item and runs before the event, not during it. Pick the items you actually intend to buy. Look at each one’s price over the last six to twelve months. Write down the number you would be happy to pay. Set an alert at that number. Then, when the event arrives, you are checking a list rather than making decisions under a countdown.

There is a narrow case where the rate genuinely tips a decision: when the same item is available at a similar price in two places, one of which is in the 5% category and one of which is not.

A $300 item at Amazon.com earns $15 at 5% back. The same item at a store where the card pays 1% back earns $3. That $12 gap is real, and it is worth knowing about when the prices are within a few dollars of each other. It is not worth chasing when they are not.

The exclusions decide whether you are in that case at all, and they are not obvious at checkout. Chase excludes not earned on purchases from merchants using Amazon Pay, on purchases at international Amazon retail sites, or on purchases made directly with travel suppliers including airlines, hotels, car rentals and cruises (Chase — Prime Visa, verified 2026-08-12). The full holiday translation of that list is on what actually earns 5% during holiday shopping.