Best Buy Clearance Prices: Are they smoking something?

[Atrac]

I've been wanting to rant about this for about a month, so here goes:

What the heck is Best Buy doing with their Clearance Prices lately? First of all, there was the whole iPaq Home Networking price shift. If anyone read the Hot Deals section back in January, Best Buy had put their whole line of Compaq Networking Items on Clearance. I don't remember the exact prices, but they were CHEAP. I believe a network hub was like $15, a PCI Network Card was $5, and the Wireless Network Router was about $79. It was announced on here and a lot of people got some good deals. About a week later, they apparently ended the clearance and now if you go in and check out the iPaq items, they are full price (so the network hub is ~$30, the PCI Card is ~$30, and the Wireless Network Router is ~$199).

Now, there's the VPR Matrix line of computers (which I happen to love by the way...that case....I just can't get enough of it!). When they first came out, the 1600 was $799.99, the 1800 was $999.99, and the 2000 was $1199.99. Decent Prices. About two weeks later, they raised each price by $100. Now this didn't really bug me, since that was probably an introductary price to get the name out there. But now, the next batch of VPR's have come out. The 1620 and the 1820. So what did BB do with the first batch, well they put them on clearance. I was all excited because I wanted to take advantage of the discount. WOAH...hold on there one second though! BB again RAISED the prices for the new "clearance." So the 1600 is now $949.50, the 1800 is $1199.50, and the 2000 is $1299.50. WTF?!?!? I have never ever seen a clearance price more than the regular selling price! It's not like we are talking about memory here (although there is memory in the computer...hmmm..maybe that has something to do with it???). Alas, the new models are out now so the 1620 is $849.99 and the 1820 is $999.99. The difference is they cut the memory on these in half (the original were 512 Megs while the new ones are 256 Megs). The processors are the same in each model respectively, but the hard drives are also smaller. I think they only improved the video card and burner (they went from 24x to 32x). Oh, and they axed the firewire card from the 1620. Maybe they realized that the computers are selling better than they had expected. Or I should say were. The new ones have been out for a week and I still see the same amount of boxes in several of the BB stores that I visit. I don't think they are selling as well.

So today I was checking out the Sony mp3 headunit. It was on clearance last week for $149.50 This week it is on clearance for ~$289.50. This was another deal posted to the hot deals forum.

So anyone have any idea what's going on? The VPR Matrix scenerio is probably a whole other ball of wax, but could the Compaq and Sony Headunit be a result of online deal sites? "HEY, people are interested! Let's raise the price and see if they still sell, even if they are on 'clearance!!!!'"

Comments welcomed.

 

[ChinamanatNCSU]

I think your last line probably summed up their mindset. I know some companies raise their prices on merchandise first, then slap a clearance sticker on it and reduce it back to around the original price. Its amazing how many uninformed people fall for a sticker...I mean, it seems you followed the prices on the VPR's pretty closely, but to the average consumer, they wouldn't know if the new "clearanced" price was higher than the original. They'd think, hey its clearanced, I must be able to save money.

my $0.02

 

[Freejack2]

Yah, the old sucker ploy. Businesses seem to be doing it a lot lately. If you go in the supermarket don't assume the bigger size is cheaper. Sometimes 2 smaller say 8oz size will be cheaper than the bigger 16oz one. 🙁

 

[kamiam]

furniture stores have been pulling this scam for years

 

[Nitemare]

I saw a game cd at officemax that was on clearance for 9.99. I pealed off the clearance sticker and the retail price was 10.00. Helluva deal if you ask me... 😀

 

[rudder]

I know some companies raise their prices on merchandise first, then slap a clearance sticker on it and reduce it back to around the original price. Its amazing how many uninformed people fall for a sticker

Yeh thats not just BB (although they suck in their own way). Furniture, clothes, cars. I mean have you ever seen those car commericals on TV offering a $2000 rebate? Of course the small print says you must take the car from dealer stock and the only ones on the lot are loaded with leather, and all tons of other unnessecary crap. You can't ever get the rebate on the base model.

The only thing you can do is research your big ticket items and know the worth before you go into a store. For smaller stuff I take my premo shopping guide, my wife.