So, I’m surfing the Newegg app for LCD TV’s, and I click on a nice looking Samsung model. “See price after checkout.” Huh? Surely they mean “see price in cart” or something, right? Nope. I go to the cart, and it says it can only show me the price after checkout.
Errrrr…what? I can only find out how much it costs after I buy it? After I buy something (presumably anything) else?
What am I missing here?
Are you sure this wasn’t Priceline?
Very strange. I wonder how many TVs they actually sell with a mystery price.
Definitely Newegg. Weird, huh?
You have to check out, but you don’t have to pay, IME. You’ll see the price in the very last screen, after you enter credit card info and everything, but before you hit the final ‘confirm’ button. If you don’t like the price at that point, you can hit ‘cancel’ instead.
Huh. What’s the point, though? It seems odd and, frankly, a bit shady.
Maybe they calculate shipping, taxes, etc, right at the end when they know where it’s going?
Do they get all your contact information for spamming, or even your location for marketing purposes?
That, once people have got that far, they’ll go ahead and buy? Works well for the seller.
I’m pretty sure there’s a link near that with an explanation.
I was on Fry today and saw a Samsung (maybe the same one) with the same deal. I added it to my cart and went to checkout, and the wanted credit card information before even telling me the price.
it’s called a “MAP” policy, or “minimum advertised price.” they can’t advertise a price lower than what Samsung wants or else they risk not being able to sell Samsung products.
:sniffs:
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it. Will Sir be paying with an American Express® Centurion Card™?
I had a very similar experience yesterday, except it was on sears.com. I clicked through three screens to try to find a price, and gave up when it required my e-mail address. I’m not going to reward this behavior with my money…even though it might mean I spend a bit more.
-D/a
I don’t think MAP is that restrictive, usually MAP is the reason for the “add to cart for price”, not “wait till checkout”.
Sounds *real *shady to me. Does Newegg have an 800 number you can call?
oh, I didn’t quite grasp that part.
[Emily Litella]
Nevermind.
[/Emily Litella]
Not a big deal if you already have a Newegg account. Sign in. Put the tv in your cart and start the checkout. you’ll see the price and have a chance to confirm the cost before being charged.
I’ve had Amazon hide prices too. Same deal it has to go in the cart first. I can’t recall having to begin checkout before seeing the price.
Apparently the electronics manufacturers are getting very fussy about items sold below their recommend retail price. The local stores are raising hell that online suppliers are undercutting them. Online sellers don’t charge taxes either. So its tough for the local Best Buy to compete.
In the war between bots huunting for the lowest price & sites trying to retain margins I see this as the latest move.
From a site’s POV, making their price easy to see is just making it easy for their competitors to underbid them by a dime. In effect the retail www is a continuous rolling auction for everything.
If you thought you like airlines’ pricing policies, just wait until that model is used for everything.
I had the same thing trying to find out the price of a TV on best buy’s website. I decided I didn’t want it that bad.
Exactly. Bot war or no, I’d bet they lose more customers than they gain this way.
Yeah, I typically bail on Amazon when I see this.
If they were worried about bots, they could show the price in a captcha style graphic.
I think it’s more likely to appease manufacturers requirements regarding minimum price advertising.
Each time a merchant requires me to jump through another hoop to make a purchase, I’m likely to bail. This applies to meatspace as well as online merchants. Merchants should try to minimize barriers for buyers. If I have to give my phone number for a purchase, and I’m paying cash…I’ll probably drop all the purchases and shop somewhere else. If I have to proceed to checkout to see the price, I’ll probably go to another website to buy that item.
Most of my purchases are for things that I want, not for things that I actually need. Even for my needs, I usually have several places that can supply whatever it is. I NEED insulin, every day. But it’s not like there’s just one place that carries this stuff, I think there’s something like half a dozen different places that I can get it within a five mile radius of my home. Quite possibly there’s more places, I can just think of half a dozen off the top of my head.