stupid pricing

[00dave]

I've been watching ultimate force on one of the itv channels as I gorged myself over xmas and remembered enjoying the show. So I dug out my series 1 and 2 dvds and watched them all (didn't realise that Mohinder Surresh from heroes was in it) but now I want to watch series 3 and 4, so I log onto play.com and search for it thinking they'll be dirt cheap by now. But I found this

Play.com (UK) - Free Delivery - DVD - Search Results: ultimate force

Why is it you can buy all 4 series in one set for almost the same price as one of the series by itself. I don't want 2 copies of series 1 and 2 but I don't want to pay £28.98 for half of what you get for £17.99. If you complain do they look into it?

 

[DaGaffer]

Why is it you can buy all 4 series in one set for almost the same price as one of the series by itself. I don't want 2 copies of series 1 and 2 but I don't want to pay £28.98 for half of what you get for £17.99. If you complain do they look into it?

It's called marketing, and no, they won't "look into it". DVD marketing is all about repackaging the same stuff to resell it as many times as possible, mainly because the typical shelf-life of any DVD can be measured in weeks, as retailers don't want to carry any "old" stock (its a liability on the balance sheet). Publishers want their content available so they have to keep repackaging it. When Sky finally stop pissing around with their objections to it, you'll probably be able to download all the individual episodes you want (for a fee of course) from Kangaroo, at which point the DVD retailers will be even more fucked than they are now.

 

[soze]

We get this in work alot it depends what distribution give you and how much they want to push it for we had a laptop all December where the version with double the hard disk and ram was £100 cheaper.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Ultimate Force?!?!

 

[00dave]

It's called marketing, and no, they won't "look into it". DVD marketing is all about repackaging the same stuff to resell it as many times as possible, mainly because the typical shelf-life of any DVD can be measured in weeks, as retailers don't want to carry any "old" stock (its a liability on the balance sheet). Publishers want their content available so they have to keep repackaging it. When Sky finally stop pissing around with their objections to it, you'll probably be able to download all the individual episodes you want (for a fee of course) from Kangaroo, at which point the DVD retailers will be even more fucked than they are now.

You've missed my point completely there. Surely the idea of stock clearance is to reduce the price to clear the old stock until its available for order only. If a product is rebranded then the old stock needs to be reduced to match the price of the new product, in this case £4.50 per single season would be an acceptable amount for an old dvd and at the same time not ripping off the customer.

Of course this applies mostly to high street shops with physical shelfs and small stock rooms. Play.com is an internet only company that I assume stores its stock in huge warehouses, so surely they can afford to be a little more flexible with stock piles and prices.

Ultimate Force?!?!

Hey if you ignore Grant Mitchell it's a pretty good program.

 

[throdgrain]

It's a bit daft, but I do admit I like it

 

[Debaser]

Hey if you ignore Grant Mitchell it's a pretty good program.

If you watch something else instead it's an amazing program.

 

[DaGaffer]

If a product is rebranded then the old stock needs to be reduced to match the price of the new product, in this case £4.50 per single season would be an acceptable amount for an old dvd and at the same time not ripping off the customer.

Which fails to understand how retail margins work. And the definition of "acceptable amount" is "whatever we can get away with". In case you haven't noticed, flogging DVDs isn't a very attractive business; the margins are rubbish and the stock turn is difficult to get right. Its the reason they actually built the whole "3 for £20" model.

 

[KevinUK]

Ultimate Force was good but I saw an episode of the latest series and it's a complete joke.

 

[00dave]

Which fails to understand how retail margins work. And the definition of "acceptable amount" is "whatever we can get away with". In case you haven't noticed, flogging DVDs isn't a very attractive business; the margins are rubbish and the stock turn is difficult to get right. Its the reason they actually built the whole "3 for £20" model.

Can't help feel I'm being talked down to here. I admit I don't understand the finer working of retail management, but judging by what I've seen on the news neither do the people in retail management

I did say that I think it's a different game when it comes to internet only companies. They can order in stock as and when. Currently trying to get a copy of braindead from play for £3.00 but it's not in stock so they have to order it in when they get so many requests.

 

[Raven]

Picked them up for £4.99 each on DvD from Play not so long ago.

Not a bad program really, goes a bit new labour in series 4 though.

 

[DaGaffer]

They can order in stock as and when.

Not really. They'll pass the information back to the publisher about interest in a title, but they rarely instigate a DVD pressing themselves, they'll just wait for the publisher to cycle through their back catalogue for it to become available again, then they'll mail their database. Online only guys will sometimes hold a larger back catalogue than bricks and mortar people, but even Amazon avoid that if they can, and rely on Marketplace to fill their inventory gaps (its also why they've bought ABE, to do the same thing in books). The online only retailers have different pressures to bricks and mortar, but they still don't like holding slow-turning stock if they can avoid it. Its one of those enduring internet myths that Web 2.0 evangelists are always banging on about; how the long tail is where they do things differently, but close analysis shows it doesn't really stack up. Digital distribution will change all that though.

 

[00dave]

I'm not looking forward to digital distribution, in fact I'm dreading it. I still buy music CDs. For a start I like to own a physical copy of something in a shiny colourful box. Right now I'm looking at my DVD collection in all it's glory and thinking that a thumbnail of them all on an external hard drive wouldn't be the same.
Then there's my tv, which is old style which would mean having to burn all the films onto a crappy looking blank DVD which would probably go up in price once DVD sales went down.
Then there's my download limit, not my internet so going over the limit would not go down too well.
Then there's reliability issues. Not long ago my old laptop went plop and all the stuff that I had recently downloaded and hadn't been backed up went with it.

Hopefully the death of physical media will never come.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Hey if you ignore Grant Mitchell it's a pretty good program.

It's one of the worst acted and least accurate military programs ever.

 

[00dave]

It's one of the worst acted and least accurate military programs ever.

erm how would you know?

Ever been in the military?

 

[Chilly]

no but hes watched all the OTHER ones and taken the average

 

[Mey]

How many times have you seen a sniper cut a piece of rope with a bullet in the middle of london to drop a bomb?

I saw it once on Ultimate force...

 

[00dave]

How many times can one person stop the world from ending in an exact 24 period, how many times can 2 people escape from prison, how many murders can occur just down the road from a dectecive's house, how many medical mysteries can be admited to the same hospital.
You go down that road Mey and programs just aren't entertaining anymore without that suspension of reality.
But if its the sharpshooting you're refering too just type sharpshooting into youtube and you'll be surprised what some people can do with a rifle.