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Buying stuff online is becoming ridiculous since Amazon started the trend of "dynamic pricing."
Yesterday I went to look for a new monitor because:
- I'd like to upgrade from 24 inch 1920x1200 to 27 inch 2560x1440
- Want a built-in docking station and power delivery for my work laptop (and future laptop)
- My current monitor is close to 8 years old and hitting 10.000+ hours of use
I found the monitor I wanted to buy at 7 shops; ranging in price from €695 to €886. Curiously, all shops had exactly 3 monitors in stock. Obviously I bought the monitor for €695. 10 minutes later, all the shops had dropped their "in stock" from 3 to 2, so they have a shared supplier and/or warehouse. Also, the store where I bought the monitor jumped its price from €695 to €885. (€885 is the MSRP, but nobody ever asks that price in the Netherlands.) Some other stores jumped from (for example) €725 to €790.
Suddenly, the price index also lists 13 stores instead of 7.
I think it's ridiculous that stores in an entire country share a single warehouse and thus basically all have the same stock. They can also see one another's prices apparently, because I've often seen stores moving up or down in price in conjunction, and often based on the number of in-stock items. Nobody seems to have their own stock anymore and they ship directly from the warehouse.
WHY shouldn't I open my own "store" and ship products to myself from that warehouse? Why should I make someone else rich who sits in between me and that warehouse?
When I was still in school, one of my classmates had his own "store": the only thing he did when an order came in was buy the product at his local computer store, package it, and send it off. (With a mark-up of about 10% or so.) When people found about this, he was basically out of business from one moment to the next.
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