Sony HC51
After looking into every angle on which camera to buy and finally thinking about buying one at long last, I had said to myself that the Sony HC51 which used Tapes but had firewire was the model of choice. The local Curry’s had this very model on sale for £135. Now I know I could find it on-line for £119 but by the time you add P&P – then its not such a bad price and of course you get to take it home then and there.
The problem came about when this was the last one they had (display model) and they were not willing to take any money off this. I asked about tapes and they do not come with any – she picked off a pack of 6 from the shelf which retailed for £23.48 – a rip off by any means. She was willing to reduce the price to £19.95 which brought the grad total to about £155. I asked her to reduce the price of the 3 Pack (£15 in the shop, £11 on-line – same shop) but she would not do that. In the end I walked away from this – I can buy Tapes on-line for next to nothing and there was no reason why as it was shop model to chuck the 3 tapes in for free.
The conclusion here is that in this instance they lost a potential sale and the fact I will probably choose not to go in there for some time. They say they cannot complete with On-line selling but this I fail to see and the reason why so many of them are starting to go bust (such as Woolworths) and loosing out to on-line. Out of interest, I can buy the Same Camcorder plus 5 tapes for £131 on-line (Amazon), if I stretched all the way to £155, then I could get 15 Tapes plus a Bag and the recorder and still have change.
If they do not change there ways – I can see a lot of shops going from the high street – people might well be out in there droves looking but the number of people actually buying (judging by the lack of bags) is not that much, they went out to see if they could get a bargain, realised the prices really have not changed and went home again. People are empowered these days – they can cross reference prices in seconds online and with the advent of web enabled devices (such as iPhone) – stores have no option.
To a few example’s – I saw a Logitech 9000 Pro Webcam – we start off with £79.99 (which happens to be the original price when it first came out years ago), £53.94 but if you do a search online – You can find it for £35.64 if you include postage, that £40- you saved £14 already.
