On Mon, 2007-01-08 at 09:48 -0200, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

Unfortunately I don't always express myself perfectly, sorry about that,
I'll try to clear up some of that now (although I'll probably just
muddle the waters more).

> You cite this fog light episode as an example. But apparently they did not
> hide their final price; they gave it to you on request. So it's an example
> for what exactly? 

I had to beg them for the s/h price, that is what I consider "hiding".
The s/h price should have been presented (without special request)
before I gave them my credit card number. This is so a customer can
quickly and easily compare prices.

> You still call it a rip-off. I don't see any rip-off here (they told you
> how much they would charge you up front -- on request, but still up front),
> and you didn't either: you bought from them. Calling the least expensive
> vendor you found of an item a ripper-offer? Sounds odd to me, and
> apparently not only to me.

My problem is they are dishonest about the s/h charge. I (and here I'm
not alone) have a problem with vendors padding their profits by
artificially inflating s/h charges.

When a customer pays a certain amount of s/h, and then discovers it
APPEARS the company only paid less then a third of that in actually s/h
charges it gives the impression the company is inflating their s/h
charges to pad the bottom line.

The reason this annoys me again is because it makes it very difficult to
compare retailers, retailer B may have a higher item price, but their
s/h price is more realistic resulting in a lower total price then
retailer A, even though retailer A had a lower advertised price for the
item.

> They cost half the price of another retailer, which you do /not/ call a
> ripper-offer, which you're fine with -- yet you didn't buy from them.
> Sounds again strange to me. 

Hehe, oh, I consider the dealer price a "rip off", trust me. However I
give them props because they don't play any games (like the online
retailers), they present one price with no surprises, letting the
consumer directly compare.

> You call it a rip-off when the price structure of an order is closer to the
> actual cost structure (with a per-order price plus item prices), but don't
> call it a rip-off when you're charged a fixed per-item price, as usual with
> normal retailers. There are many good reasons why one could call /this/ a
> rip-off, using your same arguments.

Well, I guess that explains the confusion a little. There's two "rip
offs" in my mind, the first is a large price. The second, and more
insidious is padding a profit margin by doubling or tripling s/h
charges.

Hopefully that clears things up a little.


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