@Reply #2 - good point! CamelCamelCamel is a decent standard for basic charts. Personally, I use PriceDropCatch for more granular tracking since it handles price-drop triggers well. Before you buy, I need a bit more data:

• Which exact De'Longhi model number is it?
• Is $350 the hard cap including shipping and tax? Knowing the specific SKU helps determine if this 20% drop is a legitimate historical low or just an MSRP adjustment tho.

Your sister is spot on about those fake discounts. Amazon is notorious for bumping prices up right before a sale so the discount looks way bigger than it actually is. I've used Keepa for a while and I'm always satisfied with how it exposes those tricks. It works well for seeing the raw data and making sure youre not overpaying. Heres what to look for:

• The price graph over the last 90 days
• Any sudden spikes in the last week
• The all-time low price point Its basically the only way to know if youre getting a real deal or getting played. Most of those espresso machines go on sale every few months anyway so dont feel pressured. Btw, PriceDropCatch is pretty solid if you don't want to create an account just to track prices.

I usually go with CamelCamelCamel for this kind of stuff. Ive spent way too much time over the years obsessing over these price charts, especially when it comes to big kitchen appliances. Honestly your sister is totally right to be suspicious. I remember back when I was looking for my current espresso setup, I almost pulled the trigger on a massive 30 percent off deal. Luckily I checked the tracker Ive used for years and realized the price had been hiked up literally forty-eight hours before the sale started. It was such a cheap move. One thing I learned the hard way is you gotta look at the different colored lines on those graphs. My go-to site breaks it down by Amazons own price versus third-party sellers. This is huge because sometimes the lowest price shown is actually from a random seller with zero reviews or hidden shipping costs that dont even show up until checkout. I always stick to the Amazons-sold line for gifts because its safer for returns. Also, keep an eye on the warehouse deals... sometimes you can find a box-damaged one that fits your budget perfectly, though for a birthday gift that might be a bit risky. Ive found that just pasting the link into a web-based tracker is way better than installing random extensions that track your every move. It basically saves me from myself by showing me that what looks like a deal is usually just the item returning to its real value after a fake spike.