> requires that they be able to sell at the low price offered to anyone else .. or did I dream that.

That's very false, at least for regular products on Amazon, ebooks and books have special rules and maybe that's what you recall...

You can list your products at any price you want. Browse to any product that has the "More from $xx" button below the main listing, it will take you to a list of all sellers listing that same product

(matched usually by UPC or similar, but can also just be hand selected when the listing is being created, however usually only small-time sellers bother with that since it's very difficult to manage a catalog of 20K+ products and handle each one by hand)

Each will list it at different prices. Some sellers even list the same item multiple times at different prices. There's no perfect strategy, but obviously they think it benefits them somehow.

> Once you factor in postage

Well, it seems you are overseas and not in the US, so shopping on amazon.com is probably not going to save you a lot because your shipping fees will be much more significant than most people buying domestic. Have you tried shopping on amazon.co.uk? These should be mostly domestic sellers (if you are in fact from the UK). There's also a Japan amazon and a few others.

> and having to make a new account Amazon has worked out cheaper for me

Making an account is free on almost all (sane) ecommerce websites. So this is just a laziness thing (no really it is, I'm not being smart with you, we go through great pains to make account creation as simple and easy as can be since it often does turn away customers). I do agree that having a common account is nice and simpler... which is why a lot of ecommerce websites now allow you to checkout with an amazon account (well, maybe not anymore?), Facebook account (to grab you name, email, address, etc), google account, etc.

> Any examples you can give?

There's loads. Some categories and really really big sellers (think Target/Walmart sized sellers) get special deals/treatments on Amazon and are called "Platinum Sellers". The electronics items generally will be round-about what you will pay on newegg.com or similar, but in my experience newegg.com will be a few bucks cheaper and/or have more selection that is easier to browse.

Here's a few quick ones I found:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B007R9U3HC Listed at $57.95 + shipping per each

And from the manufacturer:
http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Digi-International/XBP24... Listed at $28.00 + shipping per each

Here's a better example of the same seller on Amazon, and on their own website:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OV98P9E Listed at $6.63 per each

http://www.jewelrydisplaysandboxes.com/Cotton-Finger-Guards_...
Listed at $0.26 per each

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Another dirty little secret is the Buy Box (what the "Add to Cart" button on the main product page is called) is not always the cheapest offer for an item. You often have to click the "More from $xx" link to see all offers and find the cheapest one. The Buy Box is awarded based on a convoluted algorithm that weighs a lot of factors including feedback ratings, email message response times, number of feedbacks in the past 12 months (it's average to have about 4%-8% of sales leave feedback), on time shipments, on time deliveries, etc etc etc... They all add up and allow some sellers to list an item at a higher price than others, but still get awarded the Buy Box.