Amazon Sells Drones for $9,000

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 7:24AM EST · Published May 30, 9:45AM EDT

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The price of drones varies wildly. Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) sells one for $8,999.95. The price is a marketing trick to keep the sticker under $9,000. The technique is old and frequently used in the car business.

The drone is question is, according to the manufacturer:

DJI Inspire 1 Pro Quadcopter Black Edition with FPV “Eagle Eye” Package: Includes 2 Controllers, 2 iPads, FATSHARK Attitude V2 FPV Goggles, Osmo Handle Kit, 4x TB48 Batteries and more …

It is sold by Amazon vender eDigitalUSA. It comes in dozens of pieces, meant to allow the owner to customize it in hundreds of ways.

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The drone craze has gotten wild enough that some of them are large enough to threaten airplanes near airports. The FAA regulates the flying machines. State and local governments have rules that can be different. A USAToday report earlier this year said of federal regulations:

Congress ordered FAA in 2012 to develop rules governing how drones would share the sky with passenger planes. The first regulation for commercial drones weighing up to 55 pounds is expected in June. The FAA in December published a seven-page statement asserting its congressional authority to regulate use, management and efficiency of the national airspace.

eDigitalUSA must not have a lot of the DJI Inspire 1 Pro Quadcopters in stock. Amazon shows that it may take more than two weeks to ship one.

For people who want next-day delivery, Amazon offers a smaller drone that comes with free shipping for a product that costs $43.47:

SYMA X5C Explorers 2.4G 4CH 6-Axis Gyro RC Quadcopter With HD Camera

It comes in one piece and in one color.

To get the deal, a buyer has to be an Amazon Prime member, which costs another $99. Even a cheap drone gets expensive.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.