local rip off shop

[araaraara]

Me and my dad stopped into a computer place nearby to see what they had. They had a bunch of older systems and lots of moniters. I asked the guy at the counter how much he could get a 800mhz duron for. He showed me his pricing sheet: $139can. I could get it at a place in Vancouver for half that price! I saw the price for a 800mhz tbird: $230! Then I looked at the price for an asus A7V133: $290! He said he could "give" me a deal at $280. I could get it at the same place in vancouver for $205. Crazy! Then some guy came in and asked for a p2/3 cooling hs/f. They clerk reached under the counter and pulled out a SOCKET 7 hs/f. The guy said "no, a p2 fan. You know what that is right?" the clerk nodded and pulled out a bigger fan. The guy said no and made a rectangular shape with his hand. Finally the clerk said "I don't think we have those here." Me and my dad left the store and I told the guy to go to radioshack. They probably had a p2 fan somewere in the piles of junk they have.


Luckly I am an informed consumer. Some other kid or newbie might have actually bought the stuff at those ridiculous prices http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

[This message has been edited by araaraara (edited 06-05-2001).]

[voogru]

thats pretty sad http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

[golfcart]

Haha a socket 7 fan on a PII.... My advice:
Stay as far away as you can and warn others who don't know any better.

[araaraara]

We stopped in because it said "Wholesale Pricing" on the sign. Yeah right. Wholesale my @$$

[DanU]

Computer shops vary widely in quality and pricing, although here in the SF bay area, most of the shops around here are very competitive. They have knowldegeable staff and decent prices.

Caveat Emptor!

[Fat|Tony]

http://www.newegg.com/
Don't waste your time at stores....

[Mungla]

The computer stores here in Oklahoma are the same too. They rip you off BIG time. I suggest Newegg or Mwave.

[Dokeman]

What do you expect when you go to a local shop. At my shop the rent is $1800 a month. Thats a whole lot more that a server a month. Plus we have to pay all kinds of bils that online stores dont. I dont jack my prices up to 230 for a mobo bu i do raise them enough to pay my rent and have food to eat. Plus there are more benefits to buying stuff from a store. If you buy something online and it dosent work, you have to pay shipping back, wait 2 weeks and how then even fix it or send you the right parts. To me, thats worth going to a local store and paying a little more. I would rather pay an additional 35 bucks for something that have to wait a week for shipping and hope it works. Plus, online companies rip you off on shipping. Thats one of their biggest money makers. Believe me, when i order stuff from my distrubitor it dosent cos 10 dollars a peice to ship motherboards. I can order 10-12 mobos in retail boxes and have all of them shipped for about 6 bucks. hat do you think they do with the other 4 dollars. Thats just more profit for them. Also, if someone has problems getting something they bouth from me working they either bring their comp to me or call and i help them for free. You know when you order parts to build a comp online, you waste about 100bucks in shipping and it dont cost that much to ship a computer. And buying monitors online, thats just stupind. You can get the same monitor fo rcheaper at a shop because they charge you 40buck s to ship a monitor. Its only cost me about 80 bucks to get 10-15 monitors shipped to my store. Personally, i have had better results with stores. Im not keen on buying a buch of stuff from someone i cant even talk to.

[mad1]

Sorry,
Removed original information regarding the shipping cost of a monitor, cost was a special situation.

[This message has been edited by mad1 (edited 06-06-2001).]

[This message has been edited by mad1 (edited 06-06-2001).]

[This message has been edited by mad1 (edited 06-06-2001).]

[GroundZero3]

Plus there are more benefits to buying stuff from a store. If you buy something online and it dosent work, you have to pay shipping back, wait 2 weeks and how then even fix it or send you the right parts. To me, thats worth going to a local store and paying a little more. I would rather pay an additional 35 bucks for something that have to wait a week for shipping and hope it works.

amen to that. i learned the hard way with and asus mb. i had to ship it to them and it cost 35 bucks for 2 day!! i didn't even get the mb back for like a month! i rather spend the extra money on shops unless its from an onine store like www.directon.com (http://www.directon.com) never ever had a problem with them!

Jason

[DanU]

I've bought a lot of stuff from atacom.com. They're not always the cheapest on pricewatch.com, but they're nearby in Fremont so I can just drive by for a pick up. I don't mind paying a few dollars more to be able to see someone face-to-face and know that I'll be able to easily exchange parts THAT SAME DAY if they are bad.

[prexaspes]

When I lived in New Jersey, it was ok...

Now I live in Upstate New York.

$179.99 for a Super Socket 7 motherboard.

$350 for a 700 Duron and integrated motherboard combo, and they said they were the cheapest around. I called around. They ARE the cheapest around.

I'll order online. It hasn't screwed me yet (knock on silicon)

[wyvrn]

I stopped by one of these places yesterday. A lot of stuff had prices written on them in PERMANENT marker. Hmm, not sure I want a monitor with $175 slapped on the top of it, eh! Seems like these "wholesale" shops have higher prices than the chain retail stores. If that is the case, I am glad for Best Buy and Fry's and their return policies.

[Kabuki]

Yeah, Fry's and Best Buy actually have a pretty good selection, although you have to know what your looking for, because THEY sure don't. I used to work at Fry's, and only, say 25% of the employees knew anything about electronics. And this is the sad part, they have weekly training sessions via video conference, and people will sit to the side of the camera, or in the back row, just to sleep, while they are getting paid! It used to, no I guess it STILL makes me mad... If you are just looking for a 15" monitor, or sometimes even 17", but nothing extremely new, head to your local Goodwill store, I picked up an Apple 15' monitor for $2, and it's been running great at 1024x768 for about a year now. um... I think I'm done now...

[Toddly]

I think it all depends on where you live. I am fortunate to live close to San Jose,CA and there are many shops where I can get good prices and not have to waitor pay for shipping. There is a lot of money made on shipping and handling and that must be taken into account when purchasing. I also support local shops if the prices are reasonable. I would pay extra for service that a local shop should provide.

[araaraara]

There is a good shop near my house with good prices and parts. The staff are very knowledgeble and did a good job fixing my dead system a while back. I'm not saying that all places are bad, just that there are those few places out there looking for suckers to pay 50%+ more for the same parts you can get at another store. Plus this guy didn't seem to know too much about computers. He didn't even know what kind of fan a pentium2 takes!

[DemonKnight]

Theres a store here in my town thats kinda like that. The guy that runs it (He actually is a partner with his dad or somthing but I think thats mostly finantial backing) He just graduated Highschool this year, so I know him fairly well. I went in to get some 128MEG PC-133 RAM and asked him how much it would be, I expected at most 30.. He said $55US! I was like, your making a hell of a profit off the people who dont know much.

I left and havent been back since. I just orderd 128megs of ram from tiger direct for 36.45 total and got it sooner than I expected.

I also seen at a wal-mart store an ATI Xpert 128 16meg videocard, for 78$.. I just got an Xpert 128 2000 AGP for 47.00$ total from newegg.com. and it got here sooner than I expected too.

[Virjo]

Down Under, prices like that are a bargain!
Then again, we are tradding at approx 51 us cents...
**** the economy!

[Pojodan]

There's a shop here in town called Computer Renisance.. and beleive me, the title is fitting... they basically carry stuff from two to three years ago and charge about what that stuff cost back then.
Plus they also buy used equipment, which is their big moneymaker because they'll buy it for about half of what it's actually worth.
The fun part is that they give you an 'estimate' which is around what it is worth, 'test' it, then return with a value that's half the estimate... Of course you can always change you're mind, but that'll be $20 for the testing, please.

[AuraEdge]

We have one here..I think its called COMPUSA http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif.
Anyways all I needed was a simple harddrive rack for a 5.25 bay.
Thats it...two metal slabs so it would fit in there.
What do they have? 3 things that do this, but of course you need to buy something extra
One was a 'harddrive cooler' so it came with extra fans, but it was sold out
One was witha ATA/66/100 cable. Yea, what do I need another one of these for?
The final one had USB's ported to the face plate.
Ended up buying the last one, but they were all $15 bucks
Metal slabs w/ faceplate would probably been a dollar to 5 dollars if I got them online, but I needed it now.

Thats another benifit to B&Ms. you get the stuff now.

Thats about it....

[hawkeye177]

I have two stores that overprice their stuff by me. In one of the stores the only good deal there is cases. The other one they charge $$80 for a cheap @$$ 250 watt case. The also wanted $20.00 for a 80mm fan.
They have to overcharge because they have to stay in business. They have a lot more expences then a web store.

[Hellmund]

Yeah but down under we also pay GST which increases the price %15 or %10 or something like that, plus everything we get here had to be brought here from overseas. I will agree that some stores are amazingly over priced, there's a 32mb TNTM64 in Harvey Norman right now for $249.95 which converts to roughly $120 US. I never buy retail, well never hardware anyway, I know one day I'll run into trouble but so far computer fairs have been the best thing for me, I got a Duron 750 for $140, Retail there about $220. I did my work experience in a small town computer shop, they were over priced but I will say they did know what they were talkin about, I learned a hellov a lot that week.

[araaraara]

In Canada, there is 7% GST. Then in BC there is 7% PST. I'm paying 14% on top of the high prices!

[This message has been edited by araaraara (edited 06-08-2001).]