On Tuesday, September 19, 2017 at 9:13:10 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-19 08:52, sms wrote:
On 9/19/2017 8:02 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-19 07:06, wrote:
I'm pretty sensitive to component prices since I have to build
everything up from scratch.

One thing that has become clear lately is that buying from an on-line
store directly is becoming cheaper than buying from Ebay or Amazon.


Not always. Often the shipping costs are high unless you exceed a
fairly high Dollar amount. One bike shop had that limit at $150 so I
bought the tube via EBay. Same price but free shipping.

Then there are the auctions. I got a pair of Mr.Tuffy road bike tire
liners for $1.25 plus $3.99 shipping. That's imposible at an online
store.

Or the brake pads from China, $2/pair and free ship. As I have always
said the postage fees are grossly lopsided between Asia and the US and
that is one of the core reasosn for our trade deficit. Except that
most politicians (except manybe one ...) do not understand that.

For some reason, often an online store will have higher prices, for both
the product and for shipping, when you go direct to the store than when
you buy via their eBay or Amazon store. They are selling to two
different market segments.


Yes. A prime example is Bikewagon in Utah. I found some of their items
that I needed slightly cheaper on EBay and free-ship while their online
store charge substantial shipping costs. Considering that they have to
pay a hefty commission to EBay I do not understand that.


When I bought yard signs last year for my campaign, the price on eBay,
for the same signs from the same company, was far less, even though they
had to pay the eBay commissions.

I bought some stuff from Online Metals, and it was less to go through
Amazon than to buy direct. When I asked them about this the reply was
"you should buy through Amazon."

For bicycle stuff it varies. I bought some dynamo wheels and the eBay
price was less than the price direct from the same shop.


When my front rim is up I want to look at a 700c dynamo wheel as well.
Seems like slim pickens here in the US.

Then I can use a smaller Li-Ion pack on my road bike. However, it's not
super important so I won't pay more than $20-30 extra for the dynamo.


For both brick and mortar, and online, prices are set to reflect the
market.


I have the strong feeling that many brick & mortar owners and also many
marketing "experts" do not truly understand today's market. They don't
seem to grasp how fast a computer-savvy person (meaning almost anyone
these days) will find out the lowest cost source within tens of seconds.
Or they use a fancy shopper search engine which drops that to single
digit seconds.

Just like I thought that Amazon is going to let blood when they upped
free-ship to $49 and people like us bought less there in consquence.
Then they obviously did and dropped it down again, to $25 which is even
lower than the original $35. I guess a hard lesson has been learned.


... I recall when a former employee of mine told me about going to
buy a new computer keyboard in Berkeley. The store owner showed her a
used keyboard for $30. When she replied "I can buy a new keyboard at
Fry's for $8, he replied, "yes, but most people in Berkeley don't know
that."


I don't buy at Fry's anymore and got my reasons. Newegg and CDW are
pretty good places to buy computer stuff.

I just bought a cassette from Chain Reaction on-line paying $10 for shipping and still paid $37 less than I could get it elsewhere.