Staples a rip-off?

[mgordon99]

I was browsing in Staples today, and saw that they are selling 64MB PC100 SD RAM for $129! What a deal, huh!

I did a search on Pricewatch.com and saw it as low as $29!

I figure the realistic price to be somewhere between the two extremes.

Now I understand a business has to make a profit, but holy cow, I know RAM has been dropping in price. Staples, get a grip!

[daveleau]

Yep their prices went up witht the RAM price hike at the end of last year. $179 for 64. It then plummetted allt he way to $129. Yipie! What a rip.
Dave

[800XL]

RAM is a hard product to do on the retail level. Prices fluctuate too much for a chain of stores and an entire distribution channel to keep up, so they don't even bother.

On the flip side, Staples seems to have some great deals on blank CDs right now. 39.97 for 50packs of 80min, 29.97 for 50 packs of 74min.

[Wiz]

Staples is evil!

[skywalker[TSG]]

i must agree with 800XL on this one

they are not evil or anything like that

true this is a HIGH price

but then again
this is a large chain dealing with milions of costumers
they have several stores and such

i once bought some RAM at on of these big stores

it was when ram was extremely high 128mb cost like 300$ since they work slow they still had the price from last summer when it was wery low
so i managed to pick up this ram for 59.99
when i had paid for the ram
i walked up to the store manager
and said WOW this was cheap
other stores are charging 300$ for this
because there is a shortage of RAM

he went furious and started to curse like a mad dog on cocain http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Warthog]

Plain and simple: Staples sucks.

Their Compaq and HP computers suck.

Their variety of hardware sucks.

Their software return policy sucks.

Their warranties suck.

And above all the quality of their personnell sucks.

*** (this is all from actual experience!) ***

Some people I know bought an HP computer from them. Hard drive crashed after the 1 year warranty had expired. Staples couldn't do a thing about it. Called HP. They wanted these nice, kind, elderly folks to pay $25 for a **** tech guy to MAYBE help them out (probably wouldn't). Get a Dell. Three year warranty.

I stood (on purposely) for 15min waiting to see if the red idiot would come over to the glass counter to get me a Voodoo (all they had!). Never came. I had to go up to one of the guys and ask them to unlock it. Must be my age (teenager)...

I was standing at the Customer Service (hah!) desk waiting to return my Voodoo and a poor chap comes up to the counter saying he wants to return a piece of software he bought a few days ago. The man looked very distraught. My heart reached out for the man...

*** I understand that personnel and variety of products can vary from store to store but this is the experience I (always) have at my local Staples ***

Thank you for reading my rant.

Warthog

[This message has been edited by Warthog (edited 04-03-2000).]

[mgordon99]

I totally agree, when I was shopping for my Voodoo3 2000 AGP; all they had in the case were PCI's. So I asked THE "store manager" if they had any AGP cards and he said, and I quote "what’s that?"

This is not to mention all the money they could have made from me if they actually had other items I wanted in stock, on numerous occasions.

I don’t know how they stay in business, if every store is like that. I have had much more success making purchases with online retailers, or small local computer shops that actually know what the hell they are selling.

That’s my 2 bits.

[Brangwen]

Staples has some decent products, e.g., nice line of laser printers. Caveat emptor and shop at Best Buy or online.

Brangwen

[jad1097]

Lets see comcrap and HP computers do suck, not Staples fault.
Also a 30gig Maxtor HD for $129 because they did not have the 20.4gig in the store http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Returned a bad Live sound card that was over two months old and got a PCI512 + store credit, will get a Live when they are back in stock.

They are not a computer hardware store they are an Office supply store, the reason for the lack of hardware variety. Also the software return policy is not any differant from anywhere else I have bought software, If it has been opened they will not allow you to return it but if it is a bad CD they will exchange it. The reason for this is simple, what is to stop me from bringing it home burning a copy then returning the software to the store? It does suck when you get some software that you do not like.

[neo_otyugh]

now lets not forget that the shipping for the memory listed in pricewatch i almost as much as the price of the chip

[welsh wizard]

One problem a big supplier has, is if the bulk buy large quantaties they can get caught with high prices when the is a fast fall, also they can some times be slow to rise price when they go up, this can be by accident or plan, depends on if the company wants to profiteer or be honest with it's customers.
As stated in a previous post, ram was sold at a cheap price when prices were high, even if the manger sounded off when he was told he was selling cheap want was main managments sales policy, until this is known is it fair to slag them off, after all who has any bad reports re this company regarding aftersales or so forth,
before I condem a company I would like to know who has had trouble with there after sales service.
WW