On Sun, 2007-01-07 at 11:39 -0200, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
> I don't know where you buy from, but there are plenty of online retailers
> that don't do that. Why don't you shop with them? There are a number of
> sites that compare prices from online retailers, and the better ones of
> these show the full price, including shipping (like pricewatch.com,
> pricegrabber.com). Now you try and do something similar (comparing prices
> from ten or twenty outlets) with B+M shops :)

Ahh, but I think there is the difference, I ONLY buy online when it's
either WAY cheaper (i.e. Dell having one of their 7 days of deals
promotions) or when it's an item that's simply not available locally.

A great recent example was a set of fog lights for my car (why aren't
fog lights standard on cars these days?). The "local" price was the
price at my dealership, very expensive (I wanted OEM, no third party for
me). LOTS of places online that sold them for about half the price, but
all of them gave ZERO indication of shipping before placing the order.

I tried perhaps 4 or 5 retailers, none gave a shipping price. Since I
had no local option, I emailed them for their shipping prices. ONE, out
of the 5, responded. Their s/h price was insane (something like $40 for
regular postal mail), but even with the insane s/h price the total price
was still substantially cheaper then the local price, so I went with
them.

When I received the package it had a post mark price of $12, and it was
clear the postage label was printed in house, so at most it took them
probably 5 minutes to package it, and then it was put in a truck. So, I
ended up paying $28 for a box and 5 minutes of a person's time, THAT is
a rip off.

> All in all, it really sounds as if you were choosing your online vendors
> poorly. There are many around for which your complaints are not valid.

Well, when you have no other choice but online due to price, and all the
online vendors you've found act the same way, what else can you do?

A GREAT example of a company doing it the RIGHT way was the Scangauge I
bought: http://www.scangauge.com/

You'll notice they list one price, and it includes shipping. No fuss, no
begging for shipping details, easy. I placed the order knowing what
price I'd pay. What their margin is? No idea, don't care, to me the
price of the item with shipping was reasonable, so I'm happy. When I
received the package I didn't even look at the postmarked price.

Yes, we've already discussed why this model doesn't work for places that
expect multiple item orders.

I guess this is an issue that only bugs me, which is why online
retailers on the whole are STILL doing things the way they are doing
them.

TTYL

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