Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (67905)	7/15/1999 6:38:00 PM
From: Robert Rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 164684

Yup. I've aged a lot since April <g>.

To: Bill Harmond who wrote (67905)	7/15/1999 7:11:00 PM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 164684

A quick survey of Amazon's electronics site: A few digital cameras are featured - something I have a personal interest in so I thought I'd check AMZN's prices. The Agfa ePhoto CL50 is featured for $799 - a whopping 20% off list! The Olympus D340R is offered for only $369 - 8% off retail list! Wow, what great deals. But let's see what more experienced Internet shopping can turn up. I started out doing a brute force search using the WebSeeker search/filter program but found too many sources to bother with. So I gave old, reliable www.PriceWatch.com a try and came up with some nice hits very quickly: I found 12 sources for the Agfa CL50 - all of them under Amazon's price. The best prices were much lower than Amazon: Six sources offering the same camera for between $617 and $680. Hmmm . . . that looks like a pretty considerable difference - between 18% and 30% lower! But wait, there was some other information about a few of the offers: They offer a $100 rebate from Agfa that drops the total price down to between $519 and $580. Boy, now we are cooking. The very same product from factory authorized dealers and a $100 rebate off of discount prices. That makes the difference between 38% and 54% lower than Amazon.com$ price. I double checked the Amazon site to see if they also offered the rebate - how could they not pass on something that important to their customers - after all they are supposed to be THE consumer oriented ecommerce company. But nadda. The price difference also showed up on the Olypus D340R but not quite so dramatic. I found prices of between $315 and $349 compared to Amazon's price of $369. None of them offered a rebate. That narrows the differential to only 6% to 17%. Now I like Amazon and am registered there and would probably buy for only a 6% difference. But for 17%, a nice dinner out, I'd go with the lower priced supplier. Of course if I were willing to buy a factory refurbished unit - then that's an entirely different story - much lower prices and still comes with a warrantee. So nothing has changed - Amazon is still high priced and even higher flying in high-profile operating expenses that I don't really feel like paying for. Make no mistake, I don't think that many people are as willing to shop around as I am (it took about 6 minutes) - but I've saved a few thousand doing so over the past few years with no problems. Amazon is neat but money in my pocket makes me happy.