Computers & Networking

[ErinG77]

I have been wanting to purchase the Sony Vaio VPC-CW17FX for $799.  I have waited, hoping that it would go on sale.  Unfortunately I now see that it has jumped from $799 to $829.  Why?  I understand that prices can change without notice, but why treat your customers that way?  I suppose in a week or two it'll be featured with the "sale" price of $799. 

Having been a longtime Best Buy customer this is very disappointing to see this happen.  It may be softened a bit if the multiple coupons we receive were actually for computers/laptops once in a while, but that is not the case.  I can buy anything else in the store at 10-15% off, even computer accessories, but never the actual computer. 

I could deal with it never going on sale, or at least never getting some kind of deal on it.  But to raise the price?  I was going to buy it Best Buy.  Now I'm going to look around.

[Drew-Intel]

i would venture to say that best buy didn't modify the price on the machine to make any customers suffer or as part of any "sales tricks".

the components that go into a computer (ie memory, hard drives, lcd panel, etc) don't necessarily plateau in price - sometimes they go up and sometimes they go down, just like the price of gas.

best buy is out to satisfy its customers, and INCREASING the price on a notebook is obviously NOT the best way to achieve said goal. best buy is a business, and they will adapt to market conditions like other smart companies will.

[Nokia]

Prices don't always drop. It's as simple as that. Drew gave a very good explanation.

In addition, you don't receive coupons for computers because retailers make next to nothing (sometimes nothing) on them.

[techinfosystems]

yeah from what i know about best buy.... they dont make anything on most laptop and actually lose money on most of them.

[Entropy]

Anyone remember when RAM prices skyrocketed due to an explosion or fire at a manufacturing plant?

I don't think it was even a chip manufacturing plant itself, I think it was one that produced plastic resin that went to the RAM manufacturers for packaging.  It's been a long time so I forget the details.

So yeah, sometimes hardware prices can spike for various reasons such as exchange rate or manufacturing plant problems.