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PCASAVE
Greetings everyone, just got this in my email from eBay and seems to be going live tomorrow Thursday at 10AM.
Terms live now.
As always, enjoy :)
Click the related tab to see all PCASAVE deals.
20% off Storewide (Max $500 Discount) @ Computer Alliance eBay
3298
doweyy on 22/09/2019 - 14:55 ebay.com.au (17090 clicks)
Last edited 26/09/2019 - 10:33 by 4 other users
Last edited 26/09/2019 - 10:33 by 4 other users
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I'm not sure if our purchasing/pricing guys have finished adjusting prices on them yet, I'll remind them to get it done before this promotion starts
And by adjusting the prices you mean lowering them for the sale yes?
For real though, I have:
- 1x 2TB Samsung 970 Evo PLUS M.2 PCIe SSD PN MZ-V7S2T0BW
- 2x 1TB Samsung 2.5" 860 EVO SATA 6Gb/s SSD PN MZ-76E1T0BW
In my cart ready for the sale tomorrow Computer Alliance, please do not disappoint me.
Why have a sale of 20% if you're going to jack the price and have the discount be 10% off the pre-jacked price?
No one on ozb likes price jacking (and you can tell from comments on your competitor's posts) and yet you've decided to do it anyway?
It boggles my mind to no end.
@Ghosteye: Are you serious? They literally made a massive write up here that they don't jack up the price before a sale. Give some proof before making accusations like that.
@doweyy: Okay, this is not going to be solid proof but I want you to help me with this.
price history of 3700x
if take at look at the chart there we had an original price of 519 on the 15 of Sept? and the history of the cpu has been hovering around 530.
but it's a coincidence that it is the highest its ever been (for the past month) for this sale?
@Ghosteye: You can find here that the price was actually adjusted on the 15th of September (18:24:52 AEST) to $569, hardly a price increase specifically for this sale. As the rep mentioned, tech prices fluctuate depending on market circumstances and what they also want to sell it for, they would have been running it at $519 on promotion, then the promo ended and they re-adjusted.
@doweyy: Yup, and would it be presumptuous to say that by the 15th of Sept they would've known that there would be a 20% storewide on the 26th and acted with that information, increasing the price 10 days beforehand without a coupon (hence less probability of a sale anyway)?
also, the price changes occurred on the 28 aug, 2nd sept, 4th sept, 5th sept, 7 sept, 15 sept to 25th (deviant data of 10 days and no sales made during this period of time).
we don't have data on what the price was (maybe someone can comment) after the sale on the 15th that happened at (18:24:44) and the price change after (18:24:52) and before the 25th because no sales were made.
edit: my main point is that the price is the highest it has been over the last month and I don't know whether I can believe that it coincides with a 20% off sale, if the fluctuations were between 519 - 540 that would be believable (because of the range displayed over the last month).
edit2: it looks like this was running when CompAl increased the price to the highest it's been over the month?
@Ghosteye: I actually did a comparison for the various NAS hard drives and found they actually reduced the prices by about $15-$20 on Seagate drives between when I started doing the price research a few days ago, and today when I posted the deal > https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/485869#comment-7774118
Good to know the PSRUNG code expires and this one 20% off continue
Price Jack Alliance*
Any good RAM? Looking for 2x16GB
Jack the Price Ripper is on the prowl.
Almost 200 likes but where's the deals?
Samsung EVO 860 1TB SSD - Normally $190, sale price $159.20.
I guess that's a decent price, too bad Samsung SSD cashback is gone.
Free copy of Borderlands 3 via Redemption. I believe.
We do not know if that will be the discounted price, we will only know at 10 am tomorrow morning.
I want to be an optimist and have two of these SSD's in my cart ready to go.
because deal hasnt start yet, and they havent jack the prices yet.
Checked the prices of a few SSDs. Prices are slightly higher than normal but the "20%" code still works out to be 11-17% off.
Was looking at a HP elitebook laptop. It was $1399 around 4pm. Now its $1499!
It must have been JACK :)
Sorry for the neg OP but this is almost comical. I would suggest comparing prices carefully to make sure you are truly getting something close to 20% off before you purchase.
That's extremely disappointing. I wanted to buy Elitebook. Hate jack!
This would be easy to fix. Just put in a block (just like ebay does for normal sellers) that won't let them apply the discount to newly changed or newly listed items. It seems if it's an "ebay" code it overrides all the rules and guidelines that regular sellers must abide by for obvious reasons.
You could say ebay are complicit with these companies and enable this kind of stuff to actually happen.
Sorry CA rep who has ignored a lot of legitimate questions but it looks bad.
This seems to be a straight out lie and intentional misinformation.
I checked our price change log for the HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2 13.3" Touch Core i5 Notebook Win 10 Home PN 1ZT70PA at $1499 https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/-/173896762938
The last price update was 24/05/2019 when the price changed from $1599 to $1499
I also just checked the sales log on eBay. Anyone can check this: https://offer.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidsLogin&ite…
All sales on eBay were at $1499. We have never listed this product at $1399.
So, are you going to respond on your LIES ?
ooooooooooh, the silent treatment when he's found out….
Show us a pic of the price $1399 or didn't happen. Looks like it was always $1499
https://offer.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidsLogin&ite…We're still waiting…
Seems eBay have jumped the gun here. We have no plans to offer a 20% off coupon from tomorrow but…..
We are planning a 20% off Thu though Sunday.
why jacking the prices?
JACK must have called in sick :)
jack has an STD from Jacking everything in sight.
You need to admit you lied or were wrong on the Elitebook.
Don't you?
please educate us, in this kind of ebay sales, do you have to give certain % to ebay or do you need to foot up some of the discount, therefore you need to increase your prices? i thought ebay is subsidising buyers?
I'm curious too but I suspect this is probably something they can't openly divulge… and even if it was true for one store, each store may have different arrangements with eBay or PayPal.
I can't disclose details of our commercial agreement with eBay, but i can give you some idea of how it works.
All eBay sellers pay a fee for each sale, practically its a % of the sale price and that number is around the eBay published values for a given category, even for large sellers. Thats a fee to sell on the platform and not related to specific sales.
During store specific promotions, or the group store promotions, eBay offer advertising and a coupon discount for the stores sales. The costs of the promotion are shared by eBay and the store and when you factor in the usual sell fee the store pays, the store contributes most of the discount. Even so — eBay genuinely subsidize the buyer out of their pocket for these sales.
Additionally eBay may pay the shipping costs to the store on behalf of the buyer for eBayPlus members. For us, we have a flat $15 shipping fee per order and eBay are very generous in my view by paying that $15 fee on single items that cost as little as $15 themselves ie customer pays $15, seller gets $30 (less fees)
During the site wide promotions, the stores pay their usual fee and no more. So during a 15% off sitewide sale, eBay are genuinely handing millions of $ of subsidies over to buyers beyond what they receive back in fees - again in my view and very generous.
@Computer Alliance: With respect it informs that ebay's fees are set so they can pay for these campaigns. In short I would never describe their fees as 'generous'.
They were probably barely making profit before and doing it to build up their brand. PC parts are notorious for low profit. Add to that for every 100 products they sell, probably 5 come back as RMA or people needing help/support so they probably had to hire extra staff to cater to ebay buyers. In a nutshell those non-price jacking days are likely gone.
There is a lot of probabilities in your statement. I guess it could probably be true, maybe.
So the prices are because of this unexpected sale?
U mean it has to be Early Jack?
yeah i dont get what they are trying to say by posting that 2 sentences.
By planning I assume you mean jacking prices?
Thanks for the heads up. Hopefully there's some more stock allocated between now and then (personally looking for 3x 8TB Red Pro, and others have mentioned only Qty 1x in stock of a few items).
Not even going to be bothered getting anything on Thursday with all these over priced items just before all these 20% ebay sales.
Love how these guys don't have the berries to respond to commentary about price jacking.
For anyone wishing to submit a complaint, here's the body of the text I used for mine. Happy for others to cut and paste.
There are a number of businesses on eBay that are taking part in 'price jacking' activities whenever there is an eBay discount sale on.
Some of these are larger, prominent businesses with stores outside of eBay and are fully aware of the fact that they are doing so. It is even evident when comparing their website pricing to the pricing for the same product on their eBay stores.
An example of this behaviour is currently being exhibited by Computer Alliance with the upcoming eBay 15% off sale, with Computer Alliance having just increased their base pricing in line with the announcement.
I have attached a link with proof of this below:
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/485041You should really take the chance to answer the question here. Help us understand the reason for price jacking? Does it affect your bottom line somehow? If not, then you are just presumed greedy and deserve all the hate you get. If you don't answer, then it's quite clear what you are doing and for me personally, you will lose my business forever.
Why all the downvotes?
To store rep - I won't neg you as I'm pretty sure you have your reasons and I don't pretend to be know-it-all (walk a mile in someone shoes',etc)
Anyway I'm just curious, I presume you can opt out from these "sales", right? Why not opt out and do a real sale when it suits you?
Personally I just compare my bottomline price for what I want to buy at that moment. If at that time you're the cheapest, combined with good customer service, delivery, after sale support, etc -I would prob close one eye and do it anyway. If I'm happy to wait then I'll pass.
As others have indicated, I'm curious as to what's the reason for price jacking, if that's what happened. But yea, for your reputation prob best to do a proper sale even though less often.
Just my 2 cents..
Ozbargain staff should encourage a whistle-blower to come forward, anon.
Care to respond to the claims of Price Jacking?
why cannot?
Yes you can
Planning to!
On the lookout for some NAS drives, are people using reds?
likewise, I'm looking at 8TB Red Pro (or 10TB if the sale is worth it), the 5yrs warranty over the 3yrs of normal red is worth it for me.
Although, Anandtech recently posted an article about HDDs that had me seriously considering Ironwolf Pro.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12075/best-consumer-hdds
I heard a rumour that Gold HDDs would be reappearing sometime within the next 12mths… essentially 2x the MTBF and a 67% increase in workload (TB/yr). Great article though. Between Anandtech and Servethehome, there's always some good reporting on hardware.
Red [Pro], IronWolf [Pro] - whatever you want. we used old Seagate SV surveillance drives in non-critical NAS systems and they worked.
Oh, so now CA is no longer the favourite store of OzBargain because they're jacking prices?
It's also not surprising that their affiliated account is dodging questions on here, their customer service has always been below average and I'm glad it's finally coming to light.
I found their customer service to be far above the average eBay store or any similar b&m store. Their shipping is also pretty fast. The price jacking during the last few sales however is very disappointing.
I'm sure it's fantastic pre-sale with the potential of earning business, although post purchase support is terrible and some of their past tactics are pretty dodgy. This whole price-jacking thing is just the tip of the iceberg.
agree!
service is great (when its on their terms)
rep getting a little sanctimonious about taking stock away from us for our own good? nah, you got one job champ.
How has their customer service been average to you?
With these deals they are offering the cheapest prices on quite a few PC components in the country, but people want to say it's not a deal because it's sometimes 10-15% off their regular price.
Personally I ordered an entire PC worth of components from them around a month ago with a similar deal, shipping was fast and I decided I didn't want the GPU which was essentially just change of mind, sent it back for free and they refunded me the full amount within about 2 days of sending it off.
Whilst I agree their prices are quite low in comparison to other retailers, it's at the cost of their customer service.
I won't go into detail, but I reported my experience with CA on here in the past, and was pretty much outright called a liar and a slanderer by their affiliation team.
PCAJACK20 works too
I bough much of my recent $2200 gaming PC through Computer Alliance during 15% sale so it will be interesting to see how it compares with this sale. I found they were cheaper than the 20% deal from other sellers running at the same time.
Damn you jack!!
What examples did you find?
The NVMe drive I bought has been the same price all week
CA is laughing and saying: another 3 days to go and I already got 250+ votes and 9000+ clicks - what’s your problem boys?
and they say "haha we havent finished jacking"
Zero deals posted so far!
Was watching a Computer Alliance Seagate 8TB Hard drive on Sunday get price Jacked $30 when I checked again today. Doggy Bastards.
Seriously, no CA or wireless1 or other store staffs who are also ozb member? Please explain why all this jackings? There must be someone know, amongst thousand of ozb members.
Direct personal attack is not the best approach.
Agree. Lets start a class action. now all we need is a lawyer or two…
You need to reply to the Elitebook pricing you either lied about or were mistaken about.
It'll be interesting to see who's cheaper between CA 20% - with potential price jack and MSY 10% discount since they all happening this week
Hi Guys
Have been reading over this post and want to make a few comments. It seems to me that some people here apparently have some axe to grind, but I would hope most people don't simply accept their wild assertions. I do understand that price rises are never well received, we don't like them either, but a price rise does not a conspiracy make.
We have been raising more prices than have we have been reducing over the last month or two. This is a normal part of doing business where we are reacting to wholesale pricing pressure and other factors. We have been in a period of general price rises for a month or more now. To be specific - in the last month we have raised prices on 324 products while reducing prices on 176 products. That is across about 2500 products that we hold in stock, so a pretty small percentage overall. You will see competitors have also been raising prices.
"Price Jacking" is where a retailer raises prices across a large range before a sale and then reduces them back after. Its unethical, illegal, and we simply don't price jack. Its easy to verify that assertion. If you look at our price changes over years, or around recent eBay sales, you will find a small number of price changes happen most days or weeks, with an occasional burst of activity when there is a move in the wholesale markets, and that pattern does not change around sale periods. There are no more increases than usual before sales, and in cases where prices have risen, they are not systematically reduced after the sale has finished.
Separately to that, there is a question of our retail price at any given time vrs competitors. Companies set their prices based on many factors, and ultimately its up to the business to make a offer, and a customer can choose to buy or not. Our level of price competitiveness at a retail level will vary from time to time based on what we consider a viable margin for us, how much pressure competitors are under, the volume of sales we are seeing with current pricing, and any short term promotions such as this eBay sale. Right now I believe many pure retail businesses in IT are struggling and have reduced margins to move stock — we are under no pressure to follow because, for one, we have not seen the same downturn in our retail division, but also because a large part of our business is corporate/education/government/managed services all of which are doing quite well at the moment.
Even so, we like to be competitive and a 20% off on eBay helps with that.
…Adam
I would think it's the vocal minority that just want to find something to be annoyed about.
You're offering very competitive prices for many components with these deals (often the cheapest in AU) and I would hope the attitude of some in the ozbargain community wouldn't discourage you guys from continuing to run these promotions going forward.
So I can expect the GPU I'm looking at to be the same price in 2 days time when the sale starts? Same price before the coupon that is…
As I have said, our guys change prices nearly every day, though we try to hold off during retail promotions. Having said that, its not likely much will change at this stage before this promotion starts.
We have made a few recent large purchases that may result in price drops if they have not already been adjusted — I mentioned up further that some Samsung SSDs have/will come down owing a recent deal we did with them. Don't think there is much happening with GPUs but there might be some minor adjustments and/or some SKUs currently out of stock may come in by the end of the week.
hopefully you've got a few more WD Red Pro 8TB HDDs as I'm chasing 3x for a NAS recovery.
I am reading that as Samsung SSD's are further dropping before the sale hits tomorrow rep, which makes me very happy as I plan to buy a few from you tomorrow.
The store was true to your words. Just ordered… Was very pessimistic with all the rabid price jacking spam. Good deals to be had…
@picket23: Agreed, purchased what I had planned for my new PC build when Threadripper's come out in a couple of months, doubt I will see cheaper until Black Friday Sales.
I'm sorry that the ozbargain community keeps on with this every time you guys have a sale. Its something of an indictment against the wider ozb community in my opinion.
I think newbies fly through, read the comments, and then put you on trial again……. thanks for always being so nice about it and explaining it (Again, and again, and again)
I have been dealing with Computer Alliance for over a decade, 9/10 times I have been happy with their service. The problem most companies have is that everybody only hears about the 1/10 bad instances. Very rarely do people carry on about the other 9 good transactions.
The bad interactions I have had have also been with an individual not understanding the customer rights rather than the Computer Alliance itself. When the individual has taken the issue further it is generally resolved quickly.
I have been buying from the Computer Alliance Ebay store for some time & find they are one of the few stores that haven't jacked the price on the items I have been buying during these sales, making them very competitive against MSY,etc & substantially easyier to deal with.
I also find they will send small items by air automatically (no extra cost) which makes a big difference to shipping time to Perth (unlike some of the other sellers that seem to have a blanket $50 per item for air freight - presumably to make sure you don't choose it!).
Just my personal experience & only relevant to the items I have been buying of course.Well said Adam. Having dealt with Computer Alliance quite a bit over the year and even having a DOA HDD to return, I've got nothing but positive things to say about the service and have even bought from Computer Alliance when it's not the absolute cheapest because I value knowing that the customer service is there when I need it, and I'd rather deal with a sustainable business which will still be there tomorrow.
I have a different take, Mr Rep
the item I 'couldve' bought is now 'out of stock'. mysterious.
i say if its computer alliance then its no deal
what happened with that keyboard guy in the end? (feel free to ban me from your ebay store if you wish)
Sorry for the neg doweyy, had they just done an honest 5% off current prices then that is all we wanted (not games)
Understand that ebay as a platform is a quite small part of our sales. While its still significant, our main focus is on other areas so where possible ebay is largely automated and linked to other systems and built in such a way it doesn't interfere with our primary sales platforms.
Our inventory and pricing system is directly linked to the eBay shop via in house software and eBays API. So, for example, if we sell a certain HDD in the shop, at that moment the number available on eBay is also reduced so we don't sell one thats out of stock. The prices we set on our main site are also directly linked and automatically updated on ebay when we change them. Its likely whatever you are after is simply low stock, or out of stock.
We only list items physically in stock on eBay to ensure fast shipping times and in some cases we have a buffer level set so a small number are reserved for our other operations like system builds that may be held up if we run out of core components.
We don't list 100% of our in stock items on eBay. The far majority are there but some products that are in generally short supply at the time we may reserve for say, our builds area. Items we don't have in stock are not listed. We also do a lot of promotions outside eBay and we advertise particular products, in print advertising, or emails etc, where we are legally and ethically obliged to make sure we hold enough stock to actually make sales via those advertisements — and so where advertised products are in any way limited, we need to pull some of those products from eBay so we have enough to sell through the advertised channels.
I suppose the other general point is we make a offer on some products on eBay under expressed conditions of sale and with our reputation to back those sales. We are one of many companies that do that. If our offers suit what you want, and we have the best offer around in your view, great, we get a sale, and you get a good deal. If not, thats OK, hopefully you can find a deal that suits you better from someone else. We don't expect our offers to suit everyone and get every IT sale in the country.
I understand people get upset over companies that are misleading or dishonest. I am as up front about how how we operate as possible and and reasonable person can do their own research to verify that the lazy slander that is occasionally thrown our way is clearly misinformation, or a misdirected sense of entitlement.
In this case, and similar comments by others, the issue seems to be a misapprehension about how the market system operates. We offer, you accept or don't, its really that simple and its normal that not all offers suit all people. We are not somehow attacking or hurting you if we don't have a offer you like. Ultimately, if you think you can do better, set up a company in competition.
As for that "keyboard guy" - I think you are talking about a customer we blocked on eBay because after buying he used a product for a time, returned it because he didn't like it, refused to accept a reasonable partial refund to help us cover a discount we need to offer to resell it, and while we gave him his money back anyway it was clear he did not agree to our terms of sale so should not be buying from us. As a extreme example, imagine someone buying a notebook from us, using it for 30 days, returning for a full refund, buying another one, rinse and repeat. Free current model notebook forever at our expense!
In the interest of being as clear as possible on our policies, the below is listed on every one of our eBay listings:
Change of Mind Returns Policy
We will fully refund orders that are returned unopen and unused (in the same condition as when you received them) for up to 30 days from date of purchase.
We also offer free shipping on returns for up to 30 days via a shipping label supplied through the eBay return system.
We do not promise to accept returns on open/used products, but we may do so at our discretion. Where we are willing to accept a return on a open product, a partial refund may be offered, depending on condition. The difference between what you paid and what we will offer to refund is our estimate of how much we will need to discount the product resale as an open/used product. We assess returns that have been open on a case by case basis and typical refunds are in the range of 70-90% of amount paid.
Hi sorry to hijack another post, but curious if you guys list everything on the ebay store, or only certain items? I've been eyeing the playseat challenge on your site but can't find it in your ebay store.
Also, can you buy on the ebay store and pickup in store instead of shipping?
We don't list the playseat products on ebay, even when in stock. They are a niche/low volume/bulky item with high return rates when bought without 1st seeing, so pretty much a range we only want to sell in shop.
We don't offer pickup on ebay orders, see https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/478602#comment-7642596
@Computer Alliance: hi rep, I can't find the Adata SX8200 Pro 1TB on your eBay, but it's on your website? Can you put it on ebay? XD
@selphie: No, its listed on our main site, but we are out of stock so its not on eBay. It will go up automatically when new stock comes in, but none due short term.
@Computer Alliance: haha that ADATA item is back in stock. at exactly the same stock levels.
its like it was just switched off for the sale.
sh!t deal
@selphie: that ADATA item is exactly the item that is now out of stock and was the impetus for my above comment. unfortunately I cant glean the exact stock level from other dropshippers anymore, but I suspect its a profit not a stock level motivation behind its mysterious axing from the 'sale'.
Im sure the 'more than 10' buyers would have been happy with the purchase, then the stock level can be exhausted, leaving everyone not wholly mortified.it sure will return to stock after the sale! That is what this 'Jack' guy does after these ebay sales- that is how this ebay market system operates.
I’ve been buying from CA since CD-r’s were $16 each. They’ve been a bricks and mortar store for ever and are still around. Must say something about their business. Haters a going to hate.
FYI, we have just done a large Samsung SSD deal across all SKUs. There have been wholesale price rises in that range of late, but this was a very big deal and we have received excellent pricing by todays standards which will limit or reverse some of those price rises
We should be very competitive on Samsung SSD till this batch sells out.
I'm not sure if our purchasing/pricing guys have finished adjusting prices on them yet, I'll remind them to get it done before this promotion starts
…Adam