Prophecy PRICE SHOCKER!!!

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Bull why would they sell quantities and make a los, and thats a recent model too.
 
uhm alot of ppl actually do, especially someone who spend there savings on buying one.
 
Degaron said:
Bull why would they sell quantities and make a los, and thats a recent model too.
Click to expand...

Read my post about being a loss leader (Also, they are still making a profit - just a small one.).

Another thing to keep in mind is that if they negotiate two or three hundred bucks off dealer price for buying in bulk they are still making a profit and make up for lower margins by selling in larger quantities. Like loss leading this happens in healthy economies (Which South Africa unfortunately is not.)
 
Zones sell huge numbers of stock. When I went for their birthday sale last year @Ballito, they had LCD's stacked to the roof literally. And back then they were selling these monitors @R300-R400 less than the online stores.
 
http://www.zones.co.za/

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* eish *
 
Site is back.

That 2TB @ R999 is not too bad, but I wander OT....
 
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Bought an ASUS laptop from Zones a couple months ago - only bought it from them because the warranty is not handled by them, it's handled by ASUS themselves.

Got it for cheaper than anywhere else and if anything goes wrong I don't have to deal with Zones at all...that's a win-win situation in my books :p
 
It just does int make sense loosing almost R1600 per unit, even if you have those los leaders, it just does int make sense at all. thats even way below Cost plus VAT, so in Theory they Payed R6999 for this unit, and the only way they could have managed that is by buying it Direct.
 
Hey guys

Wow interesting thread :) Firstly, thanks to all the guys who defended us - I appreciate it.

In terms of grey imports, I have no idea if Zones are doing their own parallel (Grey) imports or not. Henk only mentioned this because this does take place in the industry, and we want customers to be aware of this. Having said that, we should've mentioned the other possibilities, which are as follows:

1. The company bought huge volume, and got a large discount. (Retail stores do this all the time, and in this situation it was the case).
2. The company is running it as a loss leader, aiming to upsell customers and make profit on accessories / internet access / etc. Once again, I think it's useful for the customer to know this.
3. The company is stuck with stock of a product they thought would sell and it isn't selling, and they are trying to get rid of it. For example this card: http://www.prophecy.co.za/sapphire-radeon-hd5850-toxic-edition-ddr5-256bit-pcie-p-71967.html - when we sell it, we'll lose money. We had a client who ordered and then cancelled, and we ended up with the stock. Now, I obviously don't like losing money - but I know the longer I have this card the more money we'll lose.

We've actually had a conversation in the office this morning about how we can better answer these kinds of questions in the future.

Referring to point #1 - it's important to remember this will *always* be a difference between retail stores and online shops. Retail stores will pick one or two products in category to focus on, and offer them at amazing prices. By contrast, online shops will offer many, many different options. We also sometimes focus on specific products (Inno3d GTX 460s, for example: http://www.prophecy.co.za/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=gtx 460&page=1&sort=3a ) but we also offer a wide range. I'm not naive enough to think that buying from us will always, in every situation, be the best. Retail stores can offer lower prices on a smaller range of products, but they can't offer the type of range we have, and they generally can't match our average pricing. I don't think this makes us a ripoff - it makes us an honest business doing our best. Just as the products that they don't offer, or can't offer at our pricing, doesn't make them a ripoff!

Finally, service - we put a huge amount of effort into our service. Some of the things we do:

- We put a huge amount of effort into our pre-sales and ordering process. Many orders ship the same day they where confirmed, and we update clients the same day if there are issues with an order.
- If you order something from us and it fails in the first 3 months, we pay shipping both ways.
- We *always* pay shipping back to you for RMAs.
- If something fails repeatedly, we credit you the product to change to a different brand or a credit on the site.
- If we think a supplier is unfair in not crediting or swapping something, we replace it for you / credit it for you, and fight with the supplier. If this happens more than once with a supplier (infact, sometimes once is enough) - we stop buying from that supplier. You will notice there are some products we don't sell, because they come from suppliers we don't trust and who don't treat us and our customers properly.
- If a swap out takes too long with a manufacturer, we step in and swap it out ourselves.
- We are always willing to credit into your bank account, rather than holding your money ransom as store credit as some other IT businesses do - checking our account, we've done nearly 40 partial or full refunds in the last month (situations where a client changed their mind, changed to a cheaper alternative, or a product was unavailable). Only exception to this is tiny amounts (less than R100) - but if it was our mistake, we'll still credit it for you.

All of the above, especially our RMA processes, cost money. We've made the decision a while ago that we are more comfortable, and can sleep better at night, treating our customers they way we want to be treated. This does mean we have to charge a little bit more! But I firmly believe that it's worth it, and I think our reputation in the industry proves this. I love the comments we get on Hello Peter, on forums, on price comparison engines, and directly from customers.

One final thing - we aren't perfect. We've definitely messed up in the past, and will mess up again in the future - but if you have a problem, please contact us and we'll do our absolute best to sort it out.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments - you can reply here, call me at my office, message me on twitter ( http://www.twitter.com/prophecyza or http://twitter.com/pauljohnston ), email me (paul at prophecy dot co dot za) or contact us on Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/pages/Prophecycoza/127482622594 )
 
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Zones is cheap and convenient. Their staff are pillicks but if you can see past that it's a lot easier and often cheaper nipping out to to one of those stores (if you live in the greater Durban area that is) than ordering online.
 
Oh - one more thing Henk asked me to include. We also stand behind you if a manufacturer disseapers or leaves SA, or when a manufacturer makes a mistake.

Some examples:
Corsair makes a mistake with timings on memory? We'll sort it out, change you to memory of equivalent performance or give you a full refund: http://www.phforums.co.za/f18/dominators-5-6-6-18-not-5-5-5-12-a-59548/

BFG is going out of business :( We'll, if you purchased a BFG card from us, we'll cover the full warranty:
http://www.phforums.co.za/f43/bfg-heads-up-rma-59600/

I know for a fact that steps like the above two, although I feel like they are only fair and a baseline I want to build from, are not taken by many other IT companies in SA :( In many cases you are told "sorry, warranty was with the manufacturer" or "sorry, Corsair's mistake, talk to them", and if they do help you out it's only after huge arguments!
 
I'm going to have to step in with the rest here and say hells that conversation was rude and almost baiting. Nicely handled from Prophecy
 
Never had issues dealing with Prophecy, had countless issues with a Samsung 2333SW and Prophecy eventually said stuff it, take any other monitor of equivalent price at purchase not market price. Touch wood the P2350 is working wonders :-D
 
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