cpap.com has new owners?

[Pugsy]

. . . .
but wait!

there's more....

Isn't there always?

Of course there's always more.

"For an additional S & H fee you can get double the number of whatever"
That's the one I just love....why in the hell don't they just cut the price in half and be done with it. Most of the time I am really stretching it to say I need one of whatever they are selling....so I am really supposed to find a use for 2 of them???
Come on, cut the price of one in half and sell a lot more of the product and everyone will be happy.

[JLROhio]

How many would you buy if I showed you a deal for $200, unopened box, full factory warranty, free shipping?

---

I'm listening!

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[JLROhio]

Oh, and per todays SuperBowl Special E-mail Sale - you CANNOT use code SLEEPERBOWL22, to save 20%, on that $1,249 ResMed AS 10 AutoSet

It's always been that way with any of the "sitewide sales" of any percent off....fine print...machines excluded.
That's nothing new.
It's rare that machines get discounted in any fashion unless they are trying to move discontinued machines.
Since ResMed is still actually manufacturing the AirSense 10 models along side the AirSense 11 (at least that's the way it was a short while ago) I won't expect to see the A10 models discounted until ResMed says the sellers can discount it since it will be discontinued.

ResMed is, or used to be, fairly contract specific on what their products can be advertised at and sold at in terms of pricing.
But as I now see some online sellers who are offering pre orders on the AirSense 11 AutoSet...the prices are all over the place. I don't know if they have relaxed their contracts or not that essentially meant ResMed was price fixing.
Used to be that 883 price for the AutoSet was what you saw everywhere....not so much now. Might change later. I dunno.

And yes....I have also noticed a marked increase in the email ads from cpap.com....last month or so maybe.
A LOT more of those emails. Used to get maybe 2 or 3 a week...maybe. Now it's often 2 or 3 a day. I don't open most of them anymore. Mostly they get deleted immediately.
I have sort of got real unhappy about the recent promo for the preorder of the A11 Autoset and overnight major price change. Left a bad taste in my mouth. As one person told me "I love cpap.com but not 400 bucks worth of love"...

I've never bought a CPAP from CPAP.com, so I was not aware that their coupons did not apply to the actual CPAP's.
Parts, yes...I've bought those, and have used the coupons to bring down their prices to reasonable levels.

I didn't realize either that ResMed forces their distributors prices (sorta like Apple Products).

As to the e-mails, I don't know why, but I hardly ever got e-mails from CPAP.com until, as you said, about a month ago.
I see they hired SalesForce.com to promote their products (from the e-mail links).

As to ResMed's price increases...it does not seem to have helped their stock price much. While ResMed's stock price is up since last June (beginning of the Philips recall), if this was Apple, based upon a product price increase, the stock would be up much, much higher. I don't think I've seen a company handed market share (to be taken at will) on a silver platter like this before and then to not have done something amazing with it.

[Pugsy]

I didn't realize either that ResMed forces their distributors prices (sorta like Apple Products).

They used to but maybe things have changed. If you had a wholesale contract (like we assume cpap.com has) then you had restrictions on advertised pricing as well as final selling price. Meaning you couldn't do like cpap.com with Respironics machines that advertised so and so price but also added "call for pricing" which was a cue for a lower actual selling price.
ResMed price fixed and everywhere on the internet sellers (companies like cpap.com) you would see the exact same price for everything from hoses to masks to machines. People would come here asking if we knew of any place where they could be found cheaper and we would have to tell them "no" unless it was a place that was more of a place that got their machines from other sources and not directly from ResMed at wholesale prices. Maybe some place like secondwindcpap where they bought from private parties not using their machines or maybe a DME closing the doors kind of thing. I don't think (no way to no for sure though) that secondwindcpap got their inventory directly from ResMed.

But yeah, ResMed used to do business like Apple. I would have thought they would have continued that practice but the slew of other price options for the A11 product does make me wonder at the moment anyway.
Not to mention some of those other price options are significantly different. It's not like we are talking 20 or 30 bucks here but hundreds of bucks different. I suppose it wouldn't be impossible for ResMed to have changed their wholesale pricing contracts for online sellers.

They didn't consult me....don't know why not. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during Respironics board discussions as well as ResMed.

[JLROhio]

They didn't consult me....don't know why not. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during Respironics board discussions as well as ResMed.

You should buy a few shares of their stock https://investor.resmed.com/investor-re ... fault.aspx and you'll be able to go to one of their Shareholder meetings and ask questions!! I'd love to see that!!

Instead of a fly on the wall...you could be a fly in the ointment!

[Pugsy]

You should buy a few shares of their stock https://investor.resmed.com/investor-re ... fault.aspx and you'll be able to go to one of their Shareholder meetings and ask questions!! I'd love to see that!!

Yeah, I suppose but you know my own personal adage about life in general....I don't spend much time or energy on stuff I have zero chance in changing and my own personal curiosity itch about the inner workings going on in the boardroom isn't that big of an itch I need to scratch.

I have long hated the ResMed business philosophy in general and while I have been known to cut off my nose to spite my face....I just haven't been able to abandon their products. They make a damn good product for the most part...at least compared to the other brands I have tried...both machines and masks.
Even now when I can't use the Bleep for some reason my go to mask is the P10. I have tried just about every nasal pillow mask out there to be had and the P10 is leaps and bounds superior IMHO or at least in meeting my own personal preferences, wants and needs.

The Bleep is fiddly to say the least....but the lack of headgear for it is a huge tipping point for me anyway. It's that important to me. When the Bleep is no longer "fiddly" I will probably get a chance to say something that I have never ever said about a cpap mask..."it's perfect"...at least for me anyway. I have yet to say that about any mask.

Anyway...ResMed's business practices I am not fond of but their products and my own success with them....mean I just have to suck it up and just grumble about things. I just can't get myself to totally abandon their products out of spite over the business practices that I think suck. I am only human after all. I sometimes which I had loftier principles...but not often.

[PST]

I have been known to cut off my nose to spite my face...

So THAT'S what happens to Pugs. I've always wondered how their noses get that way.

[ChicagoGranny]

The Supreme Court changed the law in 2007.

Leegin Creative Leather Prods., Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 127 S. Ct. 2705 (2007)

... in 2002, Leegin discovered that Kay’s Closet was discounting Leegin’s Brighton line of purses by 20%. When Kay’s refused to stop, Leegin dropped Kay’s as a retailer, triggering a law suit that continued all the way to the Supreme Court.

For the first time in almost 100 years, the Supreme Court agreed with what economists have been saying for decades: retail price maintenance programs can help companies compete without undue anticompetitive effects. Leegin was a perfect example. The company stood little chance of breaking into the market unless it could offer its retailers a handsome profit to compensate for the risk and costs of selling the new products. Retail price maintenance allowed that to happen.

The Supreme Court also agreed that retail price maintenance can be a useful tool for eliminating “free riders”– retailers who let others provide pre– and post–sale services but steal the sale by offering a lower price without incurring those other costs.

Of course, even lawful tools can be misused. The Supreme Court recognized that minimum retail pricing, if instigated by retailers, can mask a per se illegal horizontal price fixing scheme. Also, if used by a manufacturer with market power, or if the practice predominates in an industry, retail price maintenance can raise prices and reduce output with little compensating competitive benefit. Because of this potential for misuse, the Supreme Court recognized that retail price maintenance policies should remain challengeable under the antitrust laws, but only if the challenger can prove they are being used to restrain trade unreasonably.

Despite the good news, manufacturers should remain cautious. Do not adopt a retail price maintenance policy at the behest of your dealers or you unwittingly may join a per se illegal antitrust conspiracy. Also, retail price maintenance may remain illegal in some states, at least until state legislatures or supreme courts reconsider their historical bans on the practice in light of the recent Leegin decision. And even if it is legal, it may not create good cause to terminate a disobedient dealer who happens to be protected by a state anti-termination statute.

Manufacturers who dominate their market should be especially cautious about adopting a retail price maintenance policy. Leegin did not make retail price maintenance per se legal. Agreements that allow a dominant manufacturer to reap monopoly profits (or reduce output) remain illegal, although proving illegality will be much harder.

Full blog: https://www.reinhartlaw.com/knowledge/s ... um-prices/

[chunkyfrog]

Price management, fixing, or whatever you call it,
can preclude clearance sales on store premises.
Maybe this is why there are outlet stores, and why they are so popular.

[JLROhio]

I was reviewing Resmed‘s last earnings call… From about three weeks ago, in late January.

When questions came up about pricing… Resmed executives mentioned that they were imposing a “temporary surcharge“ (I think it was ~4%) to their machines to cover the extra costs in shipment and extra cost in obtaining chips. They reiterated that this would only be temporary… And further, when I asked said it only amounted to a couple of percent. They also said customers were willing to pay for a temporary surcharge and that their customers understood.

This in no way explains how a device can go from $600 up to $1250.

[LSAT]

I was reviewing Resmed‘s last earnings call… From about three weeks ago, in late January.

When questions came up about pricing… Resmed executives mentioned that they were imposing a “temporary surcharge“ (I think it was ~4%) to their machines to cover the extra costs in shipment and extra cost in obtaining chips. They reiterated that this would only be temporary… And further, when I asked said it only amounted to a couple of percent. They also said customers were willing to pay for a temporary surcharge and that their customers understood.

This in no way explains how a device can go from $600 up to $1250.

What device?

[JLROhio]

I was reviewing Resmed‘s last earnings call… From about three weeks ago, in late January.

When questions came up about pricing… Resmed executives mentioned that they were imposing a “temporary surcharge“ (I think it was ~4%) to their machines to cover the extra costs in shipment and extra cost in obtaining chips. They reiterated that this would only be temporary… And further, when I asked said it only amounted to a couple of percent. They also said customers were willing to pay for a temporary surcharge and that their customers understood.

This in no way explains how a device can go from $600 up to $1250.

What device?

The specifically mentioned both the AirSense 10 & 11.
They further said they were NOT enacting a surcharge on accessories (mask, hoses, etc...)

...In addition to component supply issues, the ongoing challenges of sea freight and air freight are impacting our ability to respond as rapidly as we would like to the demand for ResMed products. Freight costs are increasing across the board on inbound components from suppliers and on outbound products to our distribution centers and for ultimate delivery to our customers. As a result of these increased costs, we implemented a surcharge on our products starting in January to share some of the burden of these increased costs with customers.

Given all the increase in prices from commodities to special – specialty products across multiple industries around the world, the necessity of this surcharge has been understood and accepted by our customers. We are working closely with our global supply chain partners, doing everything that we can to gain access to additional supply of the critical components that we need to further increase production of our medical devices.

...But, look, the surcharge, uncomfortable, I think there was a sell-side note that was public at around this. We – it's a $12 surcharge in the US and a €12 surcharge in Europe. And it's basically on all devices. It's not applying on the mask side.

So that's the answer to those. To the question of how long will this last, obviously, we're in discussions with customers around the world. If you look at Rob's answer to the question or if you're reading the transcript, further up that transcript, it's a complex issue around sea freight, air freight, component costs, semiconductor, microchips, and we don't know how long those freight costs will be high. Those component costs will be high.

So I will say the surcharge will be there as long as those are there. It's temporary, but it's as long as those are there.

[Bookbear]

. . . .
but wait!

there's more....

Isn't there always?

Of course there's always more.

"For an additional S & H fee you can get double the number of whatever"
That's the one I just love....why in the hell don't they just cut the price in half and be done with it. Most of the time I am really stretching it to say I need one of whatever they are selling....so I am really supposed to find a use for 2 of them???
Come on, cut the price of one in half and sell a lot more of the product and everyone will be happy.

And if you order in the next 30 minutes, we'll include ABSOLUTELY FREE, a case of Ronco Turnip Twaddlers! You pay only for shipping and handling.

[chunkyfrog]

Obviously, the bulk of the surcharge is on the items loaded with semiconductors, etc.
Less paperwork than applying a "temporary" surcharge on EVERYTHING.
What if they need to remove it? Too much work . . .