Are digital attraction and sybaritic the only serious online shops?

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milomak

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I am thinking of building a system sometime before the end of the 1st quarter next year. So I have been doing research and pricing up what system I would buy now if I decided to. To my amazement the above two places were able to price up the components i would have wanted after i had done some serious research into OC'g and the like.

The components I was looking for were the below as a matter of interest:
Code: 
Core2Quad Q9550 2.66GHz 2x6MB L2 Cache
ASUS P5Q Deluxe P45 (DDR2)
HD4850
Corsair DDR2-800 4GB (2x2GB)
Cooler Master Real Power Pro RS-750-ACAA Power Supply - 750W
Coolmaster CM690 (Windowed case)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 Series - 500GB SATA

From the various sites I visted it seemed that these components should be fairly common. Besides the 2 mentioned in the title, i also compared to another 3 online stores which the forum is familiar with. Yet the others were either fairly far in prices or did not have the components.

I accept that when I am ready to buy I will send an email to all the vendors, but to be frank, I may not if I feel the prices they show on their sites are way off. I would wonder if others wouldn't do the same.
 
Is it not Digital Addiction? That would make much more sense.

If you are in Dbn try zones.com

If you are in CPT try landmarkpc.co.za
Landmark also does country-wide shipping so if you order from them they will supply anywhere.

Also: computersonly.co.za / zaps.co.za

I have had very good experience with all of the above!
 
"Coolmaster CM690 (Windowed case)"

Dude you have to get that case! For the price its soooo nice, soo much room inside and Airflow is flippen good. Those 120mm's help alot :)
 
Shop around and by that I mean look overseas too, not with a view to importing rather as a check that our local pricing is not to far out of line.

You probably won't be able to source all of your components at the best possible price from a single supplier but if the differences are not to great then it's a cost / hassle factor decision.

My observations regarding local suppliers I have used in the past:
Take what you want from these - they are my opinion and not offered as advice!

Take2 - Used to have good pricing, no complaints with service.

PCMall - Now very expensive, collected so no comment on delivery.

ComputersOnly - Some fair pricing, collected, Used to be another company
by this name that was OK, also collected

TechDigital - Didn't buy eventually - IMO practice what constitutes false advertising.

Prophecy - No purchases, but no responses to emails (several), so service issues

Have2Have - No purchases, Seem keen to help, need follow ups. Likely expensive but may be only source for hard to find items.

Nivo - Pricing issues, but response to queries is good.

Cyberdyne - Often best prices, not wide selection, always check for HDD's, CPU's, usually have best prices on these items. Will continue to use.

Digital Planet - Not great for components, Expensive, Service was OK some years back, Hate the Website.

PC International - Good prices (they are ex VAT though) but will often quote higher than advertised price, which I don't like so prefer to avoid.

DigitalAddiction - Pretty good pricing and great responsiveness, best as far as service IMO.

COMX - Good prices, always provide written quote fairly promply, No purchases yet.

CyberOrange - Once off query about item (not available), no real opinion yet

Think thats it.
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Some more "VERY" generalised observations -

As an online vendor becomes larger and more established I have found that their pricing (certainly for the items I am looking for) seems to become less competetive, singling out a few here

Take2, Sybaritic, Digital Planet.

I have an issue with sites that advertise items at a price and when attempting to purchase and the item is unavailable continue to advertise the item with no indication of likely availability or validity of price. This is just a waste of mine and everyones time. Sails a bit close to the wind insofar as consumer protection law goes IMO.
 
Broadcom said:
www.jump.co.za is the place if you want to do comparative shopping.

Edit: jump.co.za AKA shopping.mybroadband.co.za as I've just discovered !!
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Just be aware that the local price shopping engines seem to retain a fair amount of outdated and invalid data.
 
kb said:
As an online vendor becomes larger and more established I have found that their pricing (certainly for the items I am looking for) seems to become less competetive, singling out a few here

Take2, Sybaritic, Digital Planet.

*** I KNOW THIS IS AN OLD THREAD. I AM STARTING A NEW THREAD SOON. THIS IS JUST A PAGE I FOUND DOING MY RESEARCH ***

As a general comment on the above, I am researching compnaies that have closed their doors over the last few years.

The main reason for closure includes competition, specifically too low prices, it just takes one theft or hijacking at a cheap store for that store to close their doors permanently, leaving the customer without warranty on some products and with no service.

There seems to be a rule, buy cheap and you get nothing.

In the current economic cycle, there is a definate desperate attampt by some smaller stores to reduce pricing to get business, but this is becoming a problem as the stores are not able to keep up with the overheads, as low as they are. This applies to online stores to a lesser extent than store fronts. I believe people are starting to try and save money by shopping online.

I am working through a list of adword advertisers, 116 of them.

My research so far has revealed that almost 1 in 3 online stores (just under 29%) have stopped trading, they all had a few things in common:

1. They were the "smaller" online stores (less than R1million turnover a month)

2. They were selling items at "below market"
3. They targetted the low end of the market more than the middle segment and top segments.

Sybaritic and Digital attractions are small online stores, but the SA market is so poor and so underdeveloped, I would say that they happen to be in the top 20% of online stores in S.A.

Retail stores are excluded from the survey. The top guys are Incredible Connection (Incredible Group) and Incredile Solutions (not related to the connection group, they supply Game, DionWired, Makro, etc).

larger online stores (that are known to do R2million+ turnover a month) are Digital Planet, PCMall (Titan 5), ComputerOnly (Puma Technologies) and ComX Computers (Laptop Direct).

I know for a fact that an online store offered R10,000 to buy a domain name from a competitor that was underused, but the competitor refused and wanted to hold off. This was for the domain name alone. The company has dissapeared, with the prospective seller got nothing. The domain name was then snapped up for the usual price of R79 from the registrar.

BUT no-one is safe from closure or a takeover.

I will post my results on the forum in a new thread when I have completed my work. If you know of any bankrupt stores, please let me know.
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Question

kb said:
Digital Planet - Not great for components, Expensive, Service was OK some years back, Hate the Website.
Hi kb,
I hope you are well.
I would really like some feedback on your comment about Digital Planet (quoted above). I really believe that our components should be fantastic so if there is something we are missing then I would absolutely like to hear about it. Customer feedback is very important to me.

You can either reply to this or you can email me to my email address at [email protected]

Thank you and have a great weekend.

Kind Regards,
Karyn
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kb said:
Prophecy - No purchases, but no responses to emails (several), so service issues
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I'm sorry we ignored you! We did have some isuses with email response times, due to the quick growth we where experiencing. No excuse, we definitely let some emails fall through the cracks, and I'm sorry we did.

Since then, we have made changes to our site, to how we deal with emails, and to the processes we use internally to improve our response times - in general, I would say 90% of emails are currently replied to on the same day, with the balance being responded a day or two later, once we have done the necessary research / heard back from suppliers / etc.
 
Sorry your saying 10% of emails take a day or 2 to be replied? surely you atleast acknowledge the email and let the person know you have received as opposed to him thinking 2 days later your ignoring it?
 
PCSupplier said:
The main reason for closure includes competition, specifically too low prices, it just takes one theft or hijacking at a cheap store for that store to close their doors permanently, leaving the customer without warranty on some products and with no service.
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I would approach the distributor in that case. Just because a shop closes down does not mean the warranty goes out the window.

With that reasoning if you purchased a toyota tazz from a dealer and he goes under you are now without a warranty? I think not.
 
That's a great point - pretty much, when our system receives the email it responds with a standard "we got your email, we'll sort it out as soon as possible."

Then, generally if a request is going to take a few days to answer (say we need to follow up with a manufacturer or supplier) we will respond saying "Thanks for the email - I'm not sure of the answer, but I'm finding out from XYZ - this may take a few days, but we'll get back to you as soon as possible."


killadoob said:
Sorry your saying 10% of emails take a day or 2 to be replied? surely you atleast acknowledge the email and let the person know you have received as opposed to him thinking 2 days later your ignoring it?
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