Consistently Dodgy Behaviour from Australian Computer Parts Retailers - Will They close Because of It?

Ahbal on 23/10/2023 - 11:21
Last edited 23/10/2023 - 12:09 by 1 other user

Now I know we have all seen issues with Australian computer retailers on OzBragain - and I'm not talking about being upset about obvious price errors being honoured or not - I am referring to being told an item is "out of stock" at a normal / decent price, then going to check the website….seeing the price go up, and item still in stock. Again, this is outside of these websites being hammered by popular deals etc - just normal purchases.

I put in an order for a 5700x for $270 (+ shipping) at such a retailer - no indicator it was out of stock, and obviously not a price error. I got an email this morning that the product was out of stock….ok no worries. I check their website? Still on there, now up to $290……Not going to name and shame because many computer retailers we have had a deal posted for on here has done this from what I've seen over the last few years.

I always try to buy from our retailers and use Amazon as a last resort - even though I've never once had an issue with Amazon, yet consistently have issues with our retailers - again not referring to price errors - just normal purchases. Yes, I know….I am stubborn.

I manage an electronics retail store, so I can definitely sympathize with genuine errors (as you can probably tell) and the need to chase margin- but the behaviours we have all been seeing is genuinely just price gouging. Why bother buying local when Amazon AU doesn't F around like this? I don't want these places to go extinct but I'm also tired of the behaviour.

Where I live we had most our brick and mortar PC stores close down. This was before Amazon AU mind you. They closed due to their horrendous customer service losing them customers. We have 2-3 left in our area now, and they don't carry a lot of parts, mostly servicing computers.

If such places closed due to being undercut by Amazon, then that's no good - but the reality is, practices like the above are what causes it. I am happy to pay a premium to go in person and buy parts, or buy parts online from a local business - but not with behaviors like this consistently.

Apologies for the ramble but genuinely interested in the discussion, as we see a lot of it on deal posts for certain retailers ;)

Computing

Comments

  • Hybroid on 23/10/2023 - 11:30
    +8

    Many of these small independent stores are bound by distributors whom set prices and allocate stock levels. So they'll have 5 units available at $270 and 10 at $290 and they won't have enough margins to just take the hit giving you a $290 stock for $270.

    Not excusing the behaviour, just explaining why you have come across this.

    Amazon does do this as well by the way. Especially with games from what I have seen. You'll often see a game reduced to $29, it sells out, cannot order, then next day they have fresh stock at $49.

    • Stopback on 23/10/2023 - 11:45

      That's why they need to upsell and make profits etc

    • djkelly69 on 23/10/2023 - 11:48
      +2

      You'll often see a game reduced to $29, it sells out, cannot order, then next day they have fresh stock at $49.

      But Amazon will at least honour the XX number of sales at $29.

    • Ahbal on 23/10/2023 - 12:03
      +1

      I understand and agree on this in genuine cases, however in this case, this is barely within a day of placing the order. I ordered last night, they emailed me first thing this morning. The price changed this morning. If they had no stock of the batch that was 270, and the upcoming batch is 290, then why list it at 270? Why not match the 270 and keep the customer? That's what I do for mine….

      Mind you, on their website it's still listed as " on special" - but the original on special price was 270, the current listed price of 290 is not a special at all.

      In regards to your amazon example, if you order while it's at 29, you'll get it at 29. Again with obvious crazy price errors as exception. Amazon is also a larger marketplace with much higher traffic.

      • Hybroid on 23/10/2023 - 12:10

        Sounds like a terrible inventory management system that isn't accurate or kept up-to-date. Wouldn't be surprised if it was JW Computers, they don't even know what they have in-stock in-store.

        Amazon doesn't always honour awaiting stock items. Have had cancellations for "order and we'll dispatch in 2-3 weeks" orders. Pre-orders too although rare.

        • Ahbal on 23/10/2023 - 12:17

          Yes I agree,most of these retailers use terribly outdated websites that don't help this at all. It wasn't JW computers

          Yes I've had that happen with amazon once for an international purchase, outside of that they've almost always honoured them. On a scale that size it's more understandable, especially considering its mostly automated.
          At least on amazon it won't falsely be marked on special when the price is reverted / promo stock is finished (correct me if I'm wrong)

    • Namidairo on 23/10/2023 - 17:17
      +1

      I've seen quite a few of these small internet stores just blatantly mirror the items and pricing + margin from Synnex/Ingram/Dicker.

      Which I suppose takes the effort out of individually adding and pricing for them, but it leaves them open to some weird stuff like impossibly/incorrectly priced items, and things like accidentally leaking a few items before their embargo expires. (There have been a few occasions where the existence of certain model graphics cards weren't known until they started popping up automatically on these sites' listings)

      • Clear on 23/10/2023 - 19:04

        It can be pretty dangerous to mirror the distributor's too since a lot of their deals are very short lived. Like I picked up a dozen NVIDIA shields for wayyyyy below the cheapest price on OzBargain and that was live for less than 3 hours.

      • meowsers on 23/10/2023 - 19:53
        -1

        Hence why we just opened an account with ingram micro - cut out the middle man.

  • Jimothy Wongingtons on 23/10/2023 - 12:13
    +6

    iunno just vote with ya wallet i say

    • Ahbal on 23/10/2023 - 12:19

      I will never buy from that retailer again, never had a successful order with them (again no crazy price errors or ozbargain deals, just normal purchases) and that list is growing. Which is unfortunate.

  • AngoraFish on 23/10/2023 - 12:15
    +2

    You need to take "in stock" with a huge amount of skepticism. A lot of the single shop, less well known retailers that come up on staticICE just scrape wholesale price lists and then add a margin on the assumption that if an order comes in they can grab the items on same day delivery from the wholesaler and onsell straight away.

    If the wholesaler has changed their price since the last time their price list was scraped you're going to be out of luck getting the retailer to honor the price shown on their website, which will now be updated based on the more current wholesale pricing they've discovered by trying to place an order with the wholesaler at the old price.

    Wholesale price lists often aren't particularly up to date, wholesalers largely don't need to honour those prices to retailers because they aren't taking cash up front, and sometimes it will be a discontinued line with no stock, or the wholesaler will just be out of stock themselves and have to order from overseas.

    I absolutely agree that retailers shouldn't be advertising these items as "in stock", although that's not quite what you're describing - what's more typical is that there's no indication that the item is in stock, or not, they just hope you'll assume that because an item is listed on their website that they have stock on hand.

    But no, they aren't going to close, it's been like this for decades. There will always be people willing to take a risk on a bargain.

  • Bignudge on 23/10/2023 - 12:22
    -1

    Order direct from Amazon or nothing

    • Ahbal on 23/10/2023 - 12:23

      Unfortunately, when I look at my history of successful and unsuccessful orders, the scales balance very heavily towards your suggestions.

      And that's not mentioning customer service….very unfortunate.

      • Bignudge on 23/10/2023 - 12:30

        I've definitely had my fair share of poor service from big retailers and directly from manufacturers themselves.

        I bought something a security camera from JBHIFI and the sensor ended up going bad right outside of the warranty period. They tried everything in their power to flick me away. When I mentioned how the ACCC says the product should last for a reasonable time (outside of the warranty period)… they just shrugged me off.

        • Ahbal on 23/10/2023 - 12:53
          +3

          Yep same experience with JB.

          I'd walk in there in the past, ready to drop 5 -10k on gear, looking for service in that area, no one to be found.

          I then started to work there - found out why this was the case….staff legit sit in the backroom chatting. Even though the commission structure is insane, you'd make bank literally standing there answering simple questions and showing customers where things are. One of the Easiest $ to effort ratio jobs I've ever done.

          Left because other staff always cried I was serving customers in "their area" (the gaming one mind you, the easiest one!) when they were out back chatting for an hour - happened even during black Friday!! In a much better business now thankfully.

  • randomusername2017 on 23/10/2023 - 12:43
    +2

    No.. they'll just get eaten by Umart and service levels will remain the same.

    • Ahbal on 23/10/2023 - 12:47

      Hmm fair call, in that case I almost wish Umart bought the ones in my area before they closed, I'd at least have a physical place to buy a wider range of parts in a pinch.

    • Rob-4x4 on 24/10/2023 - 09:20
      +1

      I have been buying stuff from Umart since the late 1990's before they even sold retail and they have always been good to deal with . I suspect that is one of the reasons they have been growing …

  • freefall101 on 23/10/2023 - 12:59
    +1

    It's how the market works, wholesalers will sell to anyone and all the stores basically run on tiny cost + margin % models.

    It has its pros and cons though. Big pro - PC parts are consistently sold at extremely low margins and means we're getting very cheap parts. It results in service (and after sale service) being cut to the bone, but if anyone tried to increase prices to improve margins, service, etc then they'd simply be undercut by the next company to come along. It's why we churn through IT retailers like no tomorrow in this country, and they mostly started out as a bunch of people who were just interested in PCs.

    Compare that to, say, shoes. If you wanted to open a shoe store in a cheap location (or just online) like an IT store and sell shoes with a 20% markup instead of the insane prices that high end retail locations sell for, all the major shoe brands would simply refuse to give you stock to sell. You'd be hurting their supply chain and their image of being a premium product, plus kill all those high traffic locations where people do wander in and drop $250 on a pair of sneakers for some reason. IT wholesalers don't care about this. So long as you take the parts they have at the price it's going for, they don't care.

  • Seraphin7 on 23/10/2023 - 14:37

    I always try to buy from our retailers and use Amazon as a last resort - even though I've never once had an issue with Amazon, yet consistently have issues with our retailers - again not referring to price errors - just normal purchases. Yes, I know….I am stubborn.

    You're much more patient than I am. If you're consistently having problems with one set of retailers … and never a problem a particular retailer … why continue to buy from the first?

  • plmko on 23/10/2023 - 14:37

    Amazon AU doesn't F around like this?

    They do and I just experienced something they clearly didn't want to honour so they went as far as provided false statements.

    But Amazon is hardly something to compare to Computer store chain that at most takes in 30mil revenue.

  • jv on 23/10/2023 - 15:04

    Will They close Because of It?

    no

  • deme on 23/10/2023 - 19:02
    +4

    Name them.

  • jonkvh on 24/10/2023 - 10:41
    +1

    Go ahead, name them!

  • A-mak on 25/10/2023 - 16:14
    +1

    its pccasegear isn't it? They have gone downhill big time. A mate of mine ordered from them and waiting nearly 2 months for his pc parts, I ordered at the start of the month and they're only just sending out my items now.

    Very disappointing, if it's not pccasegear on your issue then I do not recommend you go to them in the future, scorptec and centrecom even mwave have done me well.

    Apparently, pccasegear was purchased by a german/overseas company and at the start of the year they sent their own manager over which degraded the quality all round and caused a lot of staff to quit. They currently claim to be moving warehouse (2+ months pretty long time to move I reckon) but it feels more like they are saying items are in stock but then dropshipping (or waiting for them to arrive locally from some international depo).

    • jonkvh on 26/10/2023 - 08:29
      +1

      Yep, they're drop shipping. Love to know what they're doing with all the old stock. Remember watching Linus's old company video where they had tons of stock that should have been sold.

  • Ramrunner on 03/11/2023 - 15:28
    +1

    I run a a small computer shop and we don't slash to the bottom any more. We used to operate on a healthy margin back in late 90s but with the big vendors all doing exclusive deals with HN/JB/OW you name it it has simply been smashed. If you really push, and we get to charge some labour with it (setup or installation), we may go down to $5 or $10 profit on the hardware item, but generally we don't take less than 10% margin any more - it would kill us. Simply can't afford to do it. Sure if we sell you a $3k item we can do a wiggle room negotiation but certainly never with any $100 item or less for example.

    We have to make money back on service charges otherwise there's no profit at all.

    So when people call and say "I bought this notebook at Harvey Norman but x or y won't work, can you look at it? I'm sure it's only a 5 minute job", we charge our full rates because that's the only money we really make these days. Sure if you buy the notebook from us and there's a 5 minute thing for us to look at or set up for you, we can throw that in, but the amount of people that buy elsewhere then want cut-price labour from us to fix something is astounding.

    Not a lot of base in reality these days.

    Anyway just trying to say please look at it from the other side of the fence sometimes. Small shops are dying because people decided to start buying from the big chain retailers (even when we were still on equal footing with pricing).

    It is what it is I guess. Luckily there are plenty of problems that need fixing or networks to set up etc keeping us busy both in-house and mobile visits. Makes it doable.

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