You may think that shopping on Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, will mean you’ll get one price. But that’s not the case if you’re comparing the U.S. and Canadian sites. The McLaughlin on Your Side team looked into price differences between Amazon.com and Amazon.ca on identical items and found some major price discrepancies.

The MOYS team converted all prices into Canadian dollars using the same exchange rate for the comparison.

We found several examples of price differences. For example, a pack of eight Minion dolls from the popular moviecost 70 per cent more on Amazon.ca than on Amazon.com.$5.80 on Amazon.com versus $19.99 on Amazon.ca.

A set of Lego Great City Vehicles cost 44 per cent more on Amazon.ca. $22.26 on the U.S. site - $39.89 on the Canadian site.

The differences really stand out on big ticket items like electronics.  A 48-inch Sony Smart LED TV – same modelwas listed for $698.38 on Amazon.com but was $879.00 on Amazon.ca – $180.62 more.  

Even a digital download on Kindle showed a huge price difference.  The downloaded Game of Thrones box set was about $19 more on Amazon.ca.  $26.19 compared to $44.99.

"I thought you guys were crazy. And then you sent me the screen shots, Oh no, they weren't crazy. Amazon's doing crazy stuff," said Keith Head from UBC’s Sauder School of Business.

But is it crazy or just smart business?  

Head, who’s a professor in strategy and business economics, has studied this stuff. He says Amazon is skilled with its computer algorithms and knows if there is competition for the same product in Canada. It knows who shops weekends or weekdays and when to drop the price and on what.

"They're not in this to make you as happy as possible, they're in this to make as much money as possible," added Head.

"The purpose is to figure out what the customer is willing to pay and to charge you just that."

The McLaughlin on Your Side team reached out to Amazon 9 times for comment over a period of several weeks, even sending screen grabs of the items in question. The company responded to say it had no comment.