Parallel imports or grey products

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R.I.P.
Joined
Jul 15, 2005
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By now I know Skinny's views on a certain corporation that sells amongst others Yamaha products at lower prices.

We all know that the prices of musical equipment are highly inflated in South Africa and I feel that the distributors should re-look their pricing strategy. A consumer cannot be blamed for buying from the place that give him/her the best price and lets be honest, if you can save between R1500 and R2000 on an AV receiver, aftersales service is not always considered.

For instance in January this year I was thinking of buying a Yamaha RX-V650 and the best price I was quoted was R 7200. At the same time the same amp was selling at the "other" place for R 5000! I did not buy it as I still wanted to audition other amps, but otherwise I would rather have saved R 2200 and worried about aftersales service later!

If my speakers or Kefs were sold by "that" store, I would have bought it from them as it would have enabled me to spend the money saved on some additional equipment.

I have done lots of pricing comparisons on equipment sold in US and UK and at some stage even considered importing the equipment I wanted as the savings would have been considerable even if import duties, VAT, transport, etc are considered.

In closing I feel that if the local distributors gave consumers better prices, their turnover will increase resulting in higher profits. There are off course the exceptions - one of them being Audio Imports who are selling CA and MS products for less than the comparable prices in the UK!

Okay, the soapbox is available again :)
 
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