I've ordered from Robert's Anime Corner Store before and been satisfied with the service and the price. I know plenty of people who swear by him and plenty who just swear at him. I can understand his taking the occasional verbal swipe at Right Stuf, which occasionally uses it's "we're the warehouse operation for all the little studios" position to give its retail arm an advantage. I've ordered from Right Stuf before and been completely satisfied, and at other times somewhat less than satisfied (thinking of one particular figure order which sat for two or three months past release without anything beyond the regular "we don't have it in stock" e-mail, then shipped... obviously it came over by slow boat, which means they ought to have had a pretty good estimate for when they could actually deliver it, and it would have been nice to have shared that information with me!)

I saw that they were running a special on figures, and was browsing through the lists, where I saw a few Lucky Star figures. I don't actually have a lot of desire for a Yutaka or Miyuki in gym uniform, thanks all the same, which is a damn good thing when I looked at the "sale price"... of $150, discounted from the "regular price" of $200.

What.

Look, I appreciate that RACS occasionally finds itself with stock on hand for items which have been discontinued, and I know that they will sometimes mark those items up - after all, if that's the only one there's ever going to be, maybe it's worth it. I know that's something that puts a bee in some people's bonnets, but eh, it's not unreasonable.

But if you then decide to put that item on sale? The jacked-up price is NOT the regular price of that item. Running a sale and claiming it as the "regular price" isn't any more ethical than Best Buy taking a TV selling for $800, then putting it on 50% sale for $799 from the "normal price" of $1,600. Hell, the "sale price" for some of those models is their original price, give or take a few yen... and that's taking into account that some of these were probably purchased at a more favorable exchange rate than what we're looking at now, too.

I get that having "multiple" retail prices might be more than what the RACS web site can accommodate, but still, this sort of thing stinks. If they're not moving at the inflated price and it's time to come down to normal, okay, I don't blame Robert for trying for more. But a sale based on a retail price the item never sold for? Come on, your customers deserve better than that.

No links since I'm complaining... probably I ought to send an e-mail directly, huh?

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 11:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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