NVIDIA Dictates Advertised Video Card Pricing

This is an annoyance. I don't know about others, but when I am in the market for a new card: I decide how much I am going to spend and then search then egg and a few other places for the fastest card I can find at or below my price point.
If the card does not show up in my price based search, because of MAP, Nv is possibly getting screwed out of a sale, and I may be getting screwed out of a better card for my money. Nv does not want the first and I do not want the second.
It does not matter if Newegg's implementation is poorly done or Nv's execution of it's MAP program is faulty. The results are the same, a possible lost sale.
 
scooter_mcgilicuddy said:
Wow QuakerOatz. Calling me on the carpet for this.

OK. I cannot cram a couple years of marketing strategy into a reply, so rest assured that it is common knowledge that "low price leader" is a disastrous strategy, typically employed by marketing/retail newbies. By all means, throw in a well-timed sale here and there, but if you rely on constant sale prices, you are a retail dead man walking.

Certainly companies exist in the high-volume, low-margin space, (ie., commodity space), but if they are smart, they constantly innovate to try to earn price premiums for their products. That is the goal of business. Poor competitors are not in the position to do this (no one will pay the premium). There ARE laws of strategy regarding pricing and the interaction with market channels. It is a whole body of knowledge called "Market Channel Management". As a marketing manager, you simply cannot throw your products out there and let the chips fall where they may.

As for my credentials...well, I don't want to make this a discussion about Scooter's credentials vs. the legitimacy of the practice of price management (what it is called). But if you want to know: my top tier MBA, top tier law degree, specialization in business/competition law, strategy, marketing, brand/channel management, and e-commerce merchandising, coupled with about a dozen years of dealing with such topics on behalf of manufacturers/distributors/retailers qualifies me to run my mouth off with little fear of being wrong (in contrast with tech topics!). You can take what I say or leave it. But as I said above, I am sensing that there is a lot of messenger shooting here, and I am better off reading about my next videocard purchase or whether to RAID0 my drives.
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I was looking for something a little more concrete than "I'm right because I have an MBA". No one is right because they have a degree and it's not a credit to your degrees to assume someone disagrees with you because they don't know what market channel management is. Perhaps they actually have little insight, perhaps even the same degree, and think you're a bit heavy on the MBA speak and a little light on the proof (that's the factual number stuff). Could I venture to guess that your self professed lack of tech knowledge might limit your insight into such specialized fields such as computer component manufacturing?

My simple point here, is that this minimum price pegging requirement is illegal in Canada, Britain and many EU countries for a reason. You'll find this reason using your legal brain, (that MBA stuff won't help you here). Even if it is (somewhat) legal in the US to form a cross supplier pricing peg,
1) It's not helping Joe consumer get the best possible price (he hits the price floor)
2) It's just a shade away from the early moves of the OPEC cartel.
3) It flies in the face of the free market system that many Americans believe is one of the cornerstones of American Way. And hey, as a Canuck, I can hardly claim any sentimentality to the good old USA. In fact I'm suprised we didn't do it first!

Either way, I don't think you're going to produce what I'm looking for so I'm probably wasting both of our time right now. It might shock you to know that I am old and educated, maybe you thought it was all kids in here?

Just take a look at a recent pic Kyle and Steve and you might be surprised by the amount of geezers in here.
 
QuakerOatz said:
I was looking for something a little more concrete than "I'm right because I have an MBA". No one is right because they have a degree and it's not a credit to your degrees to assume someone disagrees with you because they don't know what market channel management is. Perhaps they actually have little insight, perhaps even the same degree, and think you're a bit heavy on the MBA speak and a little light on the proof (that's the factual number stuff). Could I venture to guess that your self professed lack of tech knowledge might limit your insight into such specialized fields such as computer component manufacturing?

My simple point here, is that this minimum price pegging requirement is illegal in Canada, Britain and many EU countries for a reason. You'll find this reason using your legal brain, (that MBA stuff won't help you here). Even if it is (somewhat) legal in the US to form a cross supplier pricing peg,
1) It's not helping Joe consumer get the best possible price (he hits the price floor)
2) It's just a shade away from the early moves of the OPEC cartel.
3) It flies in the face of the free market system that many Americans believe is one of the cornerstones of American Way. And hey, as a Canuck, I can hardly claim any sentimentality to the good old USA. In fact I'm suprised we didn't do it first!

Either way, I don't think you're going to produce what I'm looking for so I'm probably wasting both of our time right now. It might shock you to know that I am old and educated, maybe you thought it was all kids in here?

Just take a look at a recent pic Kyle and Steve and you might be surprised by the amount of geezers in here.
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I read and re-read your post, and I am not sure how to address it. I provided more than enough detail in the last couple of posts--probably enough to bore most readers. When you asked for credentials, I gave you more than I was comfortable giving--certainly more than can simply be dismissed as a bunch of MBA-speak. If I belittled your apparent lack of understanding of this, I apologize. If I could not sanitize the material of commonly accepted industry terms, I apologize for that as well.

I am really not sure what other information or "proof" I could give you, because from the tone of your posts, I get the feeling you are fixated on "winning the argument". There is a lot of material behind this--way more than can be addressed in a couple of blog posts. So as I said, you are welcomed to take my posts as face-value assessments of industry practice, or you can believe whatever you want and ignore them.

I guess all I can say is that I can bet the sum of my career, experiences, and education that my assessment of these practices is accurate, while you will simply sit back and take pot shots regardless of any qualifications you may or may not have on this topic. You can go back to doing whatever your day job is, and I will go back to providing companies with advice on channel marketing programs.

Other that, to paraphrase Gene Wilder in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: "I SAY GOOD DAY, SIR!"
 
scooter_mcgilicuddy:
I have to thank you for teaching me:
That instead of actually addressing the relevancy of an issue, one can follow these 5 simple steps:
1) State that the issue is not news but amateur FUD
2) State how the volumes of information proving this are so vast, no mortal could possibly quote, reference or even touch on them in a single post.
3) Address any disagreement with fully expanded MBA acronyms and stating that surely one could only comprehend the meaning of these if they were too fully explore... see #2.
4) Label all of your previous statements as Standard Industry Knowledge (SIK!) (see #3) once again only truly appreciated if.... see #2
5) There is no #5. You are locked in an inescapable infinite loop.

I am truly in awe.
 
scooter_mcgilicuddy said:
Sigh. If you all don't want to hear about this, then I will go about my business and get back to more important stuff like trolling for unofficial 4850/4870 benchmarks. If it is more fun to simply bitch and moan and MF NVIDIA back and forth, go for it. But if you want insight on this matter, I am happy to provide it.

As a fairly loyal ATI guy, I am merely doing my duty to say that NVIDIA is not evil here, and we all should not avoid them because they doing what they must do to preserve their long term existence.
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Come on Scooter. have you looked at their stock chart? This company has been on a run for some time now. They're selling lots of cards, because they happen to have the fastest cards (and have for some time now). However, this move just makes it hard for me to shop. If you're not shopping for components on price, then you're not shopping smart. There's no real difference between most of these OEM cards. Oh sure, EVGA has a better warranty than most and BFG does too (though maybe not as good as EVGAs), but for the most part, these cards are interchangable. All that leaves is price.

And given that among the top Etailers, you'll generally get a 30 day return policy and after that you're dealing with the OEM, I fail to see why I should shop by anything OTHER THAN PRICE.

As for teh confusion with cards, that's not a problem of price, it's a problem of marketing (in particular the packaging of retail products) and training.

If it was a matter of price, then I'm sure people would be clammering for that 500 dollar ATI 9800 at NCIX (or some other etailer) that was posted on the Hot Deals forum.

No, this policy is definitely not designed to help consumers. Just because A/V companies have been doing this for 30 or 40 years doesn't make it a good policy.
 
This makes comparing card prices across multiple extremely annoying. Guess I'll stick solely to NCIX now (usually have anyways as I'm Canadian).

Now as I didn't read the entire article, is this a USA thing only? I'm assuming it is based off of recent comparisons on NCIX and Newegg
 
QuakerOatz said:
scooter_mcgilicuddy:
I have to thank you for teaching me:
That instead of actually addressing the relevancy of an issue, one can follow these 5 simple steps:
1) State that the issue is not news but amateur FUD
2) State how the volumes of information proving this are so vast, no mortal could possibly quote, reference or even touch on them in a single post.
3) Address any disagreement with fully expanded MBA acronyms and stating that surely one could only comprehend the meaning of these if they were too fully explore... see #2.
4) Label all of your previous statements as Standard Industry Knowledge (SIK!) (see #3) once again only truly appreciated if.... see #2
5) There is no #5. You are locked in an inescapable infinite loop.

I am truly in awe.
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Wow. This is getting interesting.

Quaker, you have done nothing but attack me in your posts--which detracts from anything you have to say about price management. You are the proverbial heckler at the back of the auditorium, not adding any insight to the discussion whatsoever. I didn't really want to "dig" into your early posts, but I call BS here. You are the one throwing terms around without giving any indication that you know the meaning behind them, and you are the one throwing around meaningless analogies about free markets and price fixing.

To borrow your logic, perhaps you will enlighten us with your credentials. By all means you are entitled to fill us in on your opinion. But can you give us any "proof" that you are anything more than some random dude running his mouth off? Lets not confuse having an opinion with expertise in the matter at hand.

Once again, take my posts for what they are worth. Dismiss them if you will. But hopefully a couple of you out there now understand NVIDIA's decision a bit better, and will understand it when you see it in other contexts and industries.
 
I like many here will vote on this issue with my next purchase.... ATI... are the drivers still buggy??? :confused: ;)
 
I hope NVIDA is reading this...
I regret buying that 8800gts ...looks like I'm going back to ATI. Good job.
 
gal said:
So I have to go to forums to get pricing in one place to build pcs for my customers?
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Or .... you could get the damn price yourself and be the one finding it out.

Is everyone here complaining that they will now have to work a tiny bit harder to get a product cheaper than someone who walks into best buy and buys a component?

Grow some fucking nuts everyone. You all want some cheese with that whine? Do a little work. You want easy? Go into Best Buy. You want cheap? Do some work. nvidia is here to extract as much money as possible from everyone in the world. your goal is to spend as little as possible. earn it. don't expect it on a silver platter.

"Oh noes I gots to click the little link to see what the price is. Woe is me."

This is not a new or novel concept. Anyone who's purchased audio components will tell you.
 
The problem with this strategy to me is NVIDIA-AMD/ATI are basically a commodity anyway. I honestly don't care for their brand and I think most around here are the same. I want the best bang for my buck.

If NVIDIA chose this path, I pretty much know instantly that I will pay more for less with them, except for some unseen "brand image" or whatever the smeg they are trying to achieve.

So for the same reason I don't wear CK or Armani, I'll just steer clear of NVIDIA and pick up my Old Navy....erm sorry, AMD/ATI card next time round.

Thinking further, I'm just trying to picture the scene
----------
"Dude, you got AMD in your pc, I didn't know your parents are on welfare"
*laughing*
"My NVIDIA GX280 is 100 awesomes more powerful with exponential HD!"
----------

Sadly, I can see that happening.
 
Good thing I don't have to deal with any of this shit. I don't even want to think about it, it's just a big mess.
 
deeznuts said:
Or .... you could get the damn price yourself and be the one finding it out.

Is everyone here complaining that they will now have to work a tiny bit harder to get a product cheaper than someone who walks into best buy and buys a component?

Grow some fucking nuts everyone. You all want some cheese with that whine? Do a little work. You want easy? Go into Best Buy. You want cheap? Do some work. nvidia is here to extract as much money as possible from everyone in the world. your goal is to spend as little as possible. earn it. don't expect it on a silver platter.

"Oh noes I gots to click the little link to see what the price is. Woe is me."

This is not a new or novel concept. Anyone who's purchased audio components will tell you.
Click to expand...

Yes, I don't feel like clicking that one more button. Sue me. I didn't use to have to click it, why should I now?
 
Unit44 said:
I like many here will vote on this issue with my next purchase.... ATI... are the drivers still buggy??? :confused: ;)
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I can't speak for everyone else, but I have yet to experience *any* issues with my HD3850, driver-related or otherwise. As I understand it, ATi's drivers have actually been quite good for some time now...
 
deeznuts said:
Or .... you could get the damn price yourself and be the one finding it out.

Is everyone here complaining that they will now have to work a tiny bit harder to get a product cheaper than someone who walks into best buy and buys a component?

Grow some fucking nuts everyone. You all want some cheese with that whine? Do a little work. You want easy? Go into Best Buy. You want cheap? Do some work. nvidia is here to extract as much money as possible from everyone in the world. your goal is to spend as little as possible. earn it. don't expect it on a silver platter.

"Oh noes I gots to click the little link to see what the price is. Woe is me."

This is not a new or novel concept. Anyone who's purchased audio components will tell you.
Click to expand...

There's more to a purchase than these factors but they are both significant and when I can have both I will thank you very much. I work for my money already, and since I'm not insane I prefer cheap and easy, and choose that when there's a choice and all other things are equal. A year ago Nvidia was in a position to play these games, their products had little competition but that's not the case unless you just have to have SLI GTX280 performance. Sure it's not the end of the world to have to click but when there's dozens of fricken cards to compare it's a real pain in the ass and when there are similiar options that aren't a pain in the ass I'll choose those. If anyone needs to grow some it's people that happily bend over and take it from companies reducing quality of service because they're to incompetent to come up with a product naming scheme that isn't a jumbled pile of crap.
 
trinibwoy said:
So they want to have a bunch of retail partners but don't want those retail partners to compete on price? What sort of ridiculous bullshit is that. Even if those "unauthorized" cards come in cheaper the big boys like BFG, XFX and eVGA still get the vast majority of sales even if they're priced slightly higher. Man Nvidia's arrogance will be their downfall.
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Supertag said:
It's beyond annoying and causes your customers to be less likely to buy your product.
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Agreed.Its shockingly stupid on thier part to do this.I dont think it'll last though.I understand what they are trying to do,but this is not the best way to go about it.

That aside,I am a little surprised at the bandwagon jumping,and NVDA bashing in here.
 
deeznuts said:
Or .... you could get the damn price yourself and be the one finding it out.

Is everyone here complaining that they will now have to work a tiny bit harder to get a product cheaper than someone who walks into best buy and buys a component?

Grow some fucking nuts everyone. You all want some cheese with that whine? Do a little work. You want easy? Go into Best Buy. You want cheap? Do some work. nvidia is here to extract as much money as possible from everyone in the world. your goal is to spend as little as possible. earn it. don't expect it on a silver platter.

"Oh noes I gots to click the little link to see what the price is. Woe is me."

This is not a new or novel concept. Anyone who's purchased audio components will tell you.
Click to expand...

Are you trying to be obstinate? It's not a little harder, it's a lot harder.

Let's say there are 10 brands of a particular Video card model that you're interested in. Let's also assume that you generally buy from 1 of 10 etailers.

You now must go to 10 etailers and click thorugh at least 100 links just to find out who has the best price.

In the past, you probably could have gone to pricegrabber and do a search on the sites of any etailers that aren't included on pricegrabber.

If you assume that Pricegrabber doesn't cover any of the etailers you shop at, this change has made it 10x harder to find the best deal. If pricegrabber actually covers 3 or 4 of those sites, it's 15 or 16 times more work.

That's not a little. Besides, MAP isn't likely to mean jack with respect to retail, since the only retailer that regularly sells cards at prices competitive to etailers is Fry's....and most people don't have a frys near by.

Of course if there's a great deal at some other place that pricegrabber/pricewatch covers, but you don't generally follow, you may never know....all because Nvidia's anti-consumer policy.
 
nilepez said:
Are you trying to be obstinate? It's not a little harder, it's a lot harder.
-snip-
Of course if there's a great deal at some other place that pricegrabber/pricewatch covers, but you don't generally follow, you may never know....all because Nvidia's anti-consumer policy.
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Please. You act like Nvidia is the only company doing this. Do you know how many products from computer electronics, DVD's, Game Consoles, et al, all have (at one point or another) not had their price advertised? Newegg has a whole system for it: click here to see lowest price, which quickly adds it to your cart via another window then gives you the choice to keep it or remove it (thus obeying MAP rules). Other e-tailers have similar systems, and heck even B&M stores aren't exempt from it 100% of the time.

Bark all you want about this. Still, if you want to go all junkyard dog on the notion, don't just single out Nvidia.
 
Nvidia is doing this because they can, and (just about) everyone will continue buying their products because they make the faster cards at this point in time.

I, for one, have been waiting to switch to ATi for a while now, and when the 4800's are released, Nvidia is not only going to lose a sale from me, but from the person I sell my GTX to ridiculously cheap.
 
Inglix_the_Mad said:
Please. You act like Nvidia is the only company doing this. Do you know how many products from computer electronics, DVD's, Game Consoles, et al, all have (at one point or another) not had their price advertised? Newegg has a whole system for it: click here to see lowest price, which quickly adds it to your cart via another window then gives you the choice to keep it or remove it (thus obeying MAP rules). Other e-tailers have similar systems, and heck even B&M stores aren't exempt from it 100% of the time.

Bark all you want about this. Still, if you want to go all junkyard dog on the notion, don't just single out Nvidia.
Click to expand...

Nvidia is being singled out because they are the only microprocessor manufacturer (or PC parts manufacturer) that is using this outdated and failed marketing technique. People expect foolishness like this from Dinosaurs like Sony but for a company that's grown up alongside the internet all of these years should have more sense than to make shopping for their products a hassle in an age filled with consumers looking for convenience. And of course B&M stores aren't exempt from it, this crap started before the internet and etailers and was in theory supposed to help small B&M specialty stores compete against larger retailers. The whole idea is nonsense though, this won't make the mess that Nvidia makes of their product naming any less confusing. Nvidia needs to put someone competent in charge of naming their product lines instead whatever marketing monkey is doing it right now, because half-baked ideas like this are just going to annoy people while the problem of a confusing product line remains unchanged.
 
nilepez said:
Are you trying to be obstinate? It's not a little harder, it's a lot harder.

Let's say there are 10 brands of a particular Video card model that you're interested in. Let's also assume that you generally buy from 1 of 10 etailers.

You now must go to 10 etailers and click thorugh at least 100 links just to find out who has the best price.

In the past, you probably could have gone to pricegrabber and do a search on the sites of any etailers that aren't included on pricegrabber.

If you assume that Pricegrabber doesn't cover any of the etailers you shop at, this change has made it 10x harder to find the best deal. If pricegrabber actually covers 3 or 4 of those sites, it's 15 or 16 times more work.

That's not a little. Besides, MAP isn't likely to mean jack with respect to retail, since the only retailer that regularly sells cards at prices competitive to etailers is Fry's....and most people don't have a frys near by.

Of course if there's a great deal at some other place that pricegrabber/pricewatch covers, but you don't generally follow, you may never know....all because Nvidia's anti-consumer policy.
Click to expand...
Cheese?

Quit whining everyone. You act like you have to click these things every day. Just as you do your research on which card is the best card to buy for your situation, those conversations always inevitably lead up to, I bought at xyz retailer for xxx price. It was the best. This is the fucking internet, the information superhighway. You're on a forum complaining about a policy implemented by a huge public company out to make money, yet you won't visit one to find a deal on a video card? Every single day at slickdeals there are hot deals on amazon or circuit city sites that have minimum advertised prices.

are you all that lazy? here:
http://forums.slickdeals.net/search.php?f=9
Type in nvidia, search. then go.
 
Inglix_the_Mad said:
Please. You act like Nvidia is the only company doing this. Do you know how many products from computer electronics, DVD's, Game Consoles, et al, all have (at one point or another) not had their price advertised? Newegg has a whole system for it: click here to see lowest price, which quickly adds it to your cart via another window then gives you the choice to keep it or remove it (thus obeying MAP rules). Other e-tailers have similar systems, and heck even B&M stores aren't exempt from it 100% of the time.

Bark all you want about this. Still, if you want to go all junkyard dog on the notion, don't just single out Nvidia.
Click to expand...

So which of those 100 words is refuting that the move does make shopping a bigger PITA for consumers? Because i went back and looked, and my response was to someone who claimed it didn't really matter.

For that matter, I don't see anything in what I wrote, much less what you quoted, where I said Nvidia was the only company. Given what I've written in this thread, I think it's plainly obvious that I understand that Nvidia isn't the only company that does this.

With that said, I don't know of any other company that sets MAP for products that they don't manufacture.

What's next? Intel telling Dell they can't advertise a PC for less than <insert MAP for each product with an intel CPU>?
 
I have gleaned through these posts and will say the market is a ruthless mother. Someone at Nvidia should learn that. Lets see what intel has to offer.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I did actually notice at newegg it was implemented... this is a horrible policy that makes it unneccessarily difficult to shop for nVidia products. If they don't want to have a price overlap to help clarify their lineup for consumers, there are many other options such as dropping prices on overlapping products to clarify the lineup, using better model numbers with some sort of in-company performance metric, or simply making an official marketing-oriented guide to what nVidia card is the best for a given user type and how to decide/learn about the different cards.

Pissing off people who are trying to BUY YOUR PRODUCT with absurdities such as UMAP on vendor sites is not a wise decision. It makes it one more step too difficult, and the average consumer will simply go look at the cards they can see the prices on. Not to mention this is probably borderline illegal, if not entirely so, as it looks more like price-fixing even though it doesn't require the vendor to adhere to a given actual sale price, it just prevents them from advertising or even implying a sale discount is given to the product in a bundle, etc. It also carries very strict penalties that amount to little more than blackmail to the vendors to follow the policy, and hurts nVidia's largest customers that sell off-shore cards to the U.S. and are based entirely on price for their livelihood.

Two thumbs down and a spit of disgust toward nVidia's direction.
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You can thank the supreme court.

WASHINGTON: The U.S. Supreme Court, overturning a 96-year-old antitrust precedent, said manufacturers and distributors in some circumstances could agree with retailers on minimum prices for products.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/28/business/price.php

It was their decision that allows manufacturers to dictate a minimum price for their products. Wondered why things seemed a little more expensive last year's Black Friday? Now you know.
 
just read the story on Nvidia's UMAP. It incensed me to the point of writing an email to timo Allison about their policy at the address that was noted on the scan that you posted.


Here's what I wrote:

------

Hello,

I just recently read your UMAP policy, and it seems to me to be against everything a free market stands for. I have long been and nvidia supporter, from the days of the riva TNT and have owned many of your outstanding products, such as the Riva TNT, TNT2, Geforce2, Geforce 3ti200, Geforce 6600GT and the 7900GS. I have always upheld your company in the highest regard, from the early days of your battle with 3dFX because of your stance of proprietary APIs and refusal to strongarm your customers.

I am extremely dissapointed to see these unethical tactics to force your retailers - the very same people you depend on to get your product into the hands of your customers-- to comply with what I see as a practice to control your prices in a free market - all under the guise of allowing the price to be set wholly within the sellers discretion. Why would you intentionally disrupt the fair market and try to confuse your custormers in such a heavy handed way?

Sadly these draconian practices that your once fine company has decided to implement will DEFINATELY affect my future purchasing decisions..

Before I depart, i implore you to reconsider this new UMAP policy. It reeks of AntiTrust, memory price fixing, The MPAA and RIAA, ISPs filtering traffic and everything else that is wrong in the computer industry today.

I am no financial expert or techno-wizz. But I do honestly believe that a major contributor to 3DFX's downfall was their arrogance in assuming they could force GLIDE on the market. PLEASE don't make the same mistake with your UMAP.

Sincerely,

A very concerned customer



-----

I just got a reply today:

-------

I wlll be on vacation until Monday, June 23rd and will not be accessing emails. For emergencies I can be reached on my cell phone at 650-759-3856.

Thank you,

Timo

nvooto

--------

So if your mad, Give him a call and tell him yourself. but only if its an EMERGENCY of course
 
Personally I think everyone should go to Newegg.com, purchase an Nvidia card and then return it with a letter telling them to grow a sack and stand up to Nvidia. If Nvidia wants to dictate market pricing they should stop being an OEM chip maker and start branding their own cards. Cut all the board makers out from their chip supply and make your own boards that way you'll be able to dictate your own price.
 
Lake said:
Yep. Looks like my next video card will come from ATi.
Click to expand...

I have no plans on a new rig until Naleham is released and for the first time in a long time I may use AMD for the GPU simple for the fact that the price/performance ratio is better than what Nvidia has to offer.

That is the downside when a company starts out performing its competitors; they start to believe they can charge anything for their products and people will still buy them.
 
I was wondering what happened. I actually checked best buy's site. Last week I didnt feel like waiting for shipping and/or rebates so I decided to look for an 8800GT. I picked up one from PNY that was 150.00 from best buy. It was advertised on their website as online only for 150.00 but they honored it in the store.
Anyway after reading this article I checked the website and was surprised to see it listed at 249.00! Then when I clicked on the item it drilled down to that product specifically and It was 179.00.
This just lets me know that this really doesn't help clarify anything for the consumer. Is that just a mistake? or is it really that price? How am I to know? Which price will be honored? How can I argue, I saw it on the site and it said it was 179.00? Only to get shown the site in the list view and have it be 249.00. What if that was someones parents or someone not computer saavy looking for a gift. It just adds to the confusion imo.
Not a good policy.
 
I haven't heard of any lawsuits being filed on all the OTHER companies doing this (including Apple). Has anyone noticed all the other products at amazon that require you to click through to see the price? Its been going on for years. And I've never seen [H] articles about it :)
 
nilepez said:
So which of those 100 words is refuting that the move does make shopping a bigger PITA for consumers? Because i went back and looked, and my response was to someone who claimed it didn't really matter.

For that matter, I don't see anything in what I wrote, much less what you quoted, where I said Nvidia was the only company. Given what I've written in this thread, I think it's plainly obvious that I understand that Nvidia isn't the only company that does this.

With that said, I don't know of any other company that sets MAP for products that they don't manufacture.

What's next? Intel telling Dell they can't advertise a PC for less than <insert MAP for each product with an intel CPU>?
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Talz said:
Nvidia is being singled out because they are the only microprocessor manufacturer (or PC parts manufacturer) that is using this outdated and failed marketing technique. People expect foolishness like this from Dinosaurs like Sony but for a company that's grown up alongside the internet all of these years should have more sense than to make shopping for their products a hassle in an age filled with consumers looking for convenience. And of course B&M stores aren't exempt from it, this crap started before the internet and etailers and was in theory supposed to help small B&M specialty stores compete against larger retailers. The whole idea is nonsense though, this won't make the mess that Nvidia makes of their product naming any less confusing. Nvidia needs to put someone competent in charge of naming their product lines instead whatever marketing monkey is doing it right now, because half-baked ideas like this are just going to annoy people while the problem of a confusing product line remains unchanged.
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I guess logitech, razer, linksys, et al, are all dinosaurs too. Guys and/or gals, everything from cars to milk, stereos to gps units, computers to cd's, pretty much every product ever made, is subject to this at one point or another. You can fume, fret, steam, denounce, et al, until the cows come home but that doesn't change the fact that it's been done for years by companies both larger and smaller than Nvidia.

You're just extra pissed at Nvidia because there's a memo on it you can point at with a hew and cry. Name any company, even better yet if it's a large one with a "hot" product, and you can find a MAP for it now or in the past. This is especially true if the ad is being paid for, in part or whole, by the product the company has. Intel, for example, has specific rules about how the ad must be structured and what content of theirs must be in it, or you get zero ad funds from them for that ad. AMD, ATI, Microsoft, hell every major company, do this. Heck HD-DVD had ad specifications to get ad money, and it was losing pathetically to Blu-ray at the time.

Boohoo for me / the consumer you cry. I / they have to click / type extra to get the best deal. Used to be you had to bargain (read: haggle) for the best deal, and you didn't get to do that in the comfort of your own home or even get to know what invoice / MSRP was many time. You want to call this a PITA? Please, don't go car shopping, ever. You just might have your brain break out of your skull and try to run away in fear.

Buck up for the suds.

P.S. if this sounds like a "toughen up Nancy" response, it is. I'm sorry, but there is 12 pages of whining how this is evil and Nivida is evil for the most part. Guess what, it's not evil and I'm sorry but Nvidia isn't the devil here. Now if they said companies couldn't sell for less no matter what, that'd be wrong (and therein subject to FTC violation).
 
deeznuts said:
Cheese?

Quit whining everyone. You act like you have to click these things every day. Just as you do your research on which card is the best card to buy for your situation, those conversations always inevitably lead up to, I bought at xyz retailer for xxx price. It was the best. This is the fucking internet, the information superhighway. You're on a forum complaining about a policy implemented by a huge public company out to make money, yet you won't visit one to find a deal on a video card? Every single day at slickdeals there are hot deals on amazon or circuit city sites that have minimum advertised prices.

are you all that lazy? here:
http://forums.slickdeals.net/search.php?f=9
Type in nvidia, search. then go.
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We don't like it and we want it back how it was, we're going to make whatever stink we need to to get it changed back. So, whatever if other companies have this stupidly annoying policy also, we're used to Nvidia not having it and we don't like the change.

Honestly, I will stop buying Nvidia cards until the policy is revoked, and, I had been pretty much 100% Nvida since the days of the Riva 128. I'm not the only one who will do this.
 
Inglix_the_Mad said:
...P.S. if this sounds like a "toughen up Nancy" response, it is. I'm sorry, but there is 12 pages of whining how this is evil and Nivida is evil for the most part. Guess what, it's not evil and I'm sorry but Nvidia isn't the devil here. Now if they said companies couldn't sell for less no matter what, that'd be wrong (and therein subject to FTC violation).
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Can you understand this: we don't like it. Got that? Ok. We're the people that tell other people what card to buy. We're the people that talk on forums. We're the people that ARE "word of mouth". Again, so, other companies do it too, do we like that? No. So how much do we put up with corporations doing things that we don't like? They exist for us, not the other way around. If we don't like a company's products, services, or policies, then, it should either A) Change or B) Go out of business. Surely, I'm not the only one who's sick of companies dictating to us what the rules are, so, now's as good a time as any to start voting with our wallets, eh?

Again: I will not buy Nvidia products until this policy is changed. That doesn't make me lazy, that doesn't make me dumb. It simply means I'm putting my money where my mouth is and not just BSing hot air. :D
 
Devistater said:
I haven't heard of any lawsuits being filed on all the OTHER companies doing this (including Apple). Has anyone noticed all the other products at amazon that require you to click through to see the price? Its been going on for years. And I've never seen [H] articles about it :)
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I asked this earlier....which ones are setting the MAP for OEMs?

Nvidia makes chipsets, not video cards. Now after well over a year of extremely high prices, they finally become reasonable and they implement MAP.

This is the equivalent of Intel telling OEMs the MAP for their PC...or, if you prefer, the MAP for a MB.

This is not Apple saying, "If you want to sell our iPods, you can't advertise for less than X.

Others have mentioned the Xbox, but AFAIK, retailers don't really make anything on the Xbox....like MS, they make it all on accessories and software. There's just not a lot of motivation to discount those particular items.
 
Inglix_the_Mad said:
I guess logitech, razer, linksys, et al, are all dinosaurs too. Guys and/or gals, everything from cars to milk, stereos to gps units, computers to cd's, pretty much every product ever made, is subject to this at one point or <snip>
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So exactly why did you quote me? I coudln't find anything in your post that addressed my post. Did you just randomly check off a couple of messages to quote before you started typing?

Here's a clue, oh clueless one, not one of the items you listed is a component manufacturer. Logitech doesn't set the prices for other HID manufacturers. Linksys doesn't either. What's more the chipset maker (the brains of that linksys router) doesn't tell Cisco what price retailers can advertise Linksys routers.
 
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