I’m usually pretty good at picking out TV scams, but Ronco eludes me.
I used to sell knives as a summer job. It was arduous. No one wants to pay that much for a knife. Ron Popeil (sp?) seems to know that.
Given that, how the heck can he sell 25 knives for $39.99? Especially with a lifetime guarantee.
How can this possibly be profitable?
For reference, I am referring to this promotion, in particular.
I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that the actual quality of the knives is crappy. It probably doesn’t cost Ronco very much to churn out large quantities of knives, using the cheapest of components. Wustof or Sabatier these are not.
Second, I bet they are counting on most people not taking advantage of the lifetime warranty, so it becomes a selling point, with little cost to them.
I saw that infomercial, and I wondered myself. It could be that the “lifetime guarantee” makes you pay to-and-fro shipping at an outlandish cost. S/H for Ronco products always seems to be quite high.
Also, upon looking at Ronco’s rating at PlanetFeedback, they have pretty bad customer service (the wait times, yow).
I bought some cruddy Ginsu 2000 knives off eBay, I got about 25 knives for a lot less than Ronco is asking, and I thought they would at least last me out a year of college. They rusted out immediately and about half broke on the first use… maybe Ronco’s stuff is comparable.
I mean, they have to be paying for the infomercial time, and I work in the infomercial business. Infomercial products can be good, but they’re seldom cheap.
They are reasonably durable, inexpensively manufactured, mass produced knives. The actual raw materials of even a good knives are not wildly expensive, the real cost is in the labor involved in manuf. and the level of acceptable quality. It takes a lot more labor and finishing to produce truly high quality knives.
Remember Ginsu knives? Cheap stuff with a snappy commercial.
Same thing with Ronco.
Presented right, you can make any knife look fantastic. Cutting sneakers, chopping tomatoes, etc. Is there any knife that won’t cut a sneaker and slice a soft tomato!?
I love the tomato tricks, because depending on what they want to impress on you, they use different tomatoes. A tomato can be rock hard and cold, or very ripe and mushy, so they love to drag out tomatoes.
The rest of the commercial centers around a guy that is good with the chopping and dicing.
Big whoop.
I believe it is a combo of high shipping and handeling and the person won’t return it, if defective.
Notice that on ads like products from IGIA (Is anything this company sells good??). It says Personal Shaver Trimer 14.99. Also FREE FREE and IGIA Head Towel AND ALSO FREE FREE an IGIA personal grooming kit. FREE FREE. (then in VERY small print it says) 5.99 S&H per item. So you think 20.98 WRONG it’s 5.99 S&H for EACH item INCLUDING the free ones so it’s 32.96 you are paying. Most people simply get mad and shrug it off.
Like the ad “THESE CDs ARE ABSOLUTELY FREE.” Just pay $5.99 S&H. Or "THIS IS A FREE OFFER FOR OUR VITAMIN. Just pay $7.99 S&H.
So you see there is money to be made in S&H. Especially on an assembly line basis.
Again how many people are gonna return a knife 5 years old. Oh sure some but the majority won’t so that is money in the bank. Especially if it costs to ship it back. Some plans require you ship the old ones back.
Funny I had a Solofelx (great product btw) they gave you a FIVE YEAR warrenty on there rubber weights. But they NEVER even wanted them back. You could order more by saying the broke, and they didn’t check. Maybe that’s why you don’t see their ads anymore 
During a dark period of my life I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door. We gave a way preimums for allowing us to do a demonstration, usually Ginsu™ knives. I found the reason was that both Kirby - a very epensive vacuum - and Ginsu - an utterly crappy knife - were owned by the same parent company, Scott Fetzer. It’s expensive to make good knives but Ginsus are barely more than the cost of materials.
They probably don’t have a cost price above $25. And the “lifetime guarantee” is likely to be pretty useless (ie you’ll have to pay $6.99 to cover the shipping charges).
I remember IGIA hawking a parafin hand bath (a small tub in which you heated up parafin to coat your hands with which supposedly moisturizes them) which came with a FREE LIFETIME SUPPLY of parafin. Of course, the S/H on the parafin refills far exceeded the cost of the material…
My girlfriend once got tickets to a game show and as we were leaving the studio after the taping, we were approached by a fellow who asked us if we would like to be in the audience of an infomercial and just for participating we would receive a free gift “worth over $50.00.” We were already there and had time to spare so we decided to go. As I remember (this was like 10 years ago) the product was one of the knock off juicers. What I remember clearly is that they had a three pallets full of these juice machines and they must have gone through 50 of them taping the show. Several failed to work right out of the box and many also died after a few minutes of use. What was our free gift? You guessed it - one of the bogus juicers.
Here is what to watch for on the knive commerical with the Uncle as the pitch man.#1 when he tries to slice the tomato with the old knife he pushed down on the tomato with his fingers as he tries to cut it making it almost impossible to make a clean cut. #2 He then cuts a tomato with the Ronco knife , but watch how he doesn’t squash the tomato with his fingers. Same with the bread , dull old knife he uses the same trick , pushing down the bread with his fingers , so the knife cannot cut properly. The Ronco knife get no such obstruction just a clean cut . # 3 Now when The con man Uncle cuts the steel hammer head with the Ronco knife he only uses the middle of the knife. After showing the fileings he cuts the tomato…but watch carefully he uses the front part of the knife the part that never touched the hammer. In the other commerical Ron Popeal cuts a leather shoe sole , again he cuts the leather with the middle part of the knife then cuts the tomato with the front of the knife, the part of the knife that never touched the leather…quite a scam
This is very informative, but now I’d like to know how the Longines Symphonette Society can afford to sell all those long-playing records for such a reasonable price.
I’ll look into that right after I request warranty replacement by the manufacturer of my failed coal oil lamp. They’re only charging me two pieces of gold S & H.
Can’t remember the scam’s name, some mega vitamin supplement. FREE trial, only pay S&H. S&H was $99.99 for a six pack of Mega vitamin this and protein supplement that. I also seem to remember that particular scam is illegal now.
Were those “subscription” sales? There is never just one in any batch of old records, you’ll see about a dozen. I once found a big leather carry case at a yard sale with the Longines emblem on the side.
Didnt REonco also make the Pocket Fisherman? Those actually worked quite well and the current version is a crappy knockoff.
Ronco had a reputation for decent quality. These weren’t top-of-the-line knives, but they were adequate for most people.
It’s the same with the rest of them (and also Popeil, which was the same company, run by Ron Popeil). Their products usually did the job reliably, just not as well as more expensive ones. They also tended to specialize in gadgets that had no equivalent. For example, the Pocket Fisherman was just fine for someone who liked to fish occasionally but who didn’t want to keep the equipment with him at all time.
Will Ginsu knives kill zombies? That’s the burning question.
Thirding the love for Pocket Fisherman. The original ones were great.