Price Gouging

P

PMildren

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 4, 2006
Messages
302
I have recently been doing some searching on the internet for parts I plan on purchasing. What I like to do is spend a few weeks before my purchase tracking prices, reviews, and history on the part I plan to buy. I do this to try and make sure I am getting my moneys worth, like I am positive alot of your budget concious computer builders are.

So to the point, while doing some research on an AMD Opty 180, I noticed that the same stores and e-tailers are charging $600-800 for this not quite hard to find item. Now I have a working understanding of supply and demand, and understood when the AMD 4800+ s939 became harder to come by, that the price increased. Or when a new vid card comes out that the price is more then it really should be. But when a not hard to find item is 2-3x the average market price, it reminds me of how greedy we really are.

It reminds me of when gasoline here in the states shot up to over $3 per gallon. Price gouging at its best. Now, I know that on my own I could never hope to start some revolution to stop this practice. Yet I cant help but try and make a list of price gouging e-tailers and see if we cant slow down their business.

So heres the deal. As consumers, we know that word of mouth can be a powerful tool. Lets start listing e-tailers that like to price gouge for their own benefit.

Here is a start:

atacom.com charging $700 for an AMD Opteron 180 denmark which can be easily found for $300 anywhere else.
 
I suspect ath the extreme end alot of this comes down to low volume resellers that would rather let a chip sit on the shelf for 6 months or a year than sell it at a loss because AMD slashed prices on them, rather than thier deciding to deliberately jack hte prices up.
 
You want to see price gouging go compair any retailer or etailer to radioshack, they excist to prey on unsuspecting people. they sell outdated models of lower end electronics at severely jacked up prices and get away with it constantly. and don't even get me started on their giftcard policies, "we're sorry you can not use a giftcard online if it doesn't have a 4 digit PIN number, you can not get a pin number for a card that does not have one, you can not exchange a pin-less card for one with a pin, please select a runner-up prize from the junkbins we call our retail outlets, kthxbai" you know what to get your worst enemy for christmas? a radioshack giftcard.
 
cold-cell said:
you know what to get your worst enemy for christmas? a radioshack giftcard.
Click to expand...
I think it's fair to say all shop gift vouchers/cards are the devil's work. I thought cheques were the ultimate evil till I came across gift vouchers
 
As long as people will pay it, it will sell. Just look on ebay at the $2500 playstation 3's
 
Most B&M stores do some sort of price gouging, but rarely on the same items. (Then again, you often pay two to three times more for no-name/value-based RAM at Circuit City/Best Buy/CompUSA than you would if you went to NewEgg or ZipZoomFly.) One example is when I bought a 4GB PNY thumb drive from CompUSA... I bought it for $99.99 there (which, believe it or not, is its normal retail price) when I saw it listed at Best Buy that same day for $249.99. I also know a lot of Mom-and-Pop stores that charge "retail" prices for generic items (e.g., $50 for DVD-ROM drives, and almost $200 for 80GB notebook HDDs :eek: ).
 
Howbout you just stick to NE and ZZF? Pricegrabber works fine, too. Alot of retail B&M stores charge alot to account for the returns, since they don't have a restocking fee (Fry's).
 
enginurd has the right idea. Reward the good retailers/e-tailers with your business. That's the whole idea behind capitalism. The other guys won't last long with no business.

CoachB
 
I just want to point out that you may think you get the shaft sometimes in the States, but people in other countries get much worse deals on almost everything.

US gas prices went over $3 a gallon? That's 79 cents a litre. In Alberta where I live there were times recently that I paid $1.10+ per litre. This is despite the fact that we have HUGE oil reserves literally in our backyard.

In terms of hardware, the exchange rate alone cannot come close to making up the difference in prices we see up here. I'm sure people in many other countries see the same thing every day.
 
Not sure what to tell you. I know the english get screwed on alot of retail purchases. I had a friend in Iraq who was British, he was telling me that if someone ships him parts he get taxed heavily on said parts. And to just purchase online you get taxed heavily. I guess thats part of living in a smaller country that needs to tax heavier for a smaller tax base. Then again I am no finalcial wiz, just tired of seeing companies screwing over consumers. Its mostly consumers that dont do their research in advance.
 
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