Originally posted by: kaborka
Hey "user", some of us HAD to expend 2004 funds by year-end -- couldn't affort to wait. Plus, Monarch includes copies of Far Cry and HL2 with their combos, which was worth at least $80 to people who purchase their games. There are many aspects to a deal!

The fact they are still including the games with their combos now makes their lower price an
outstanding deal, IMHO.
We would like to thank you, kaborka, for purchasing the board from us for $315. We assure you we will make good use of the profits. Speaking of which, this was one of our most profitable sales in a long time. You would not believe the profit margin on this sale. While I'm not allowed to disclose details, let me assure you that our wholesale cost per unit is well below $150, as it was from the beginning. Since we suspected there would be significant demand, and initially few available sources, we decided to charge as much as possible. Notice the nice touch when we put the product on our web store front with a regular price of $369, but selling at a discount for $315. We thought that would make buyers like you feel better about the deal. While we knew that soon enough the board will be available from our competitors at much lower prices, we hoped for buyers like you, that for whatever reasons, could not wait a couple of weeks, and in the process of purchasing the board in a hurry, will increase our normal profit margin by an extra $150 per unit. It's true that only a small a number of customers took the bait, but we still managed a sizeable profit, so we consider this marketing scheme a success and we'll be using it again in the future. But for now, since availability of the product has increased and the market price has indeed come down quite a bit, and orders for this product from our store have completely dried up, we decided to lower the price down to the current average market price range, which still guarantees us a decent profit. We apologize for that, but remind you that you cannot return the product and re-purchase for the new low price, as allowing this would undermine our goal of maximizing profits.
Thanks again.