ResMed caves in.......?

My apologies to Johnny for posting a link to another seller's site on this forum......but......

I noticed a link to an article within a link that Jules posted in another thread.....so I thought it would be interesting to those of us who have followed the manufacturers' mandatory pricing policies over the last few years.

http://www.cpap-supply.com/Articles.asp?ID=171

I don't know what changed their minds, but maybe they're looking at the whole global financial picture and have seen the errors of their ways. (We can only hope)

And, now a "plug" for our forum host......CPAP.COM.......

https://www.cpap.com/DisplayNewsletter/67


Den

Edit: OOPS.....I just noticed that the sale at CPAP.COM expired at midnight last night (26th).

.

Funnily enough, in Australia it is illegal for a manufacturer to set any price controls. They may suggest a 'recommended retail price' but not a minimum, or a fixed price.

K

.....so, I have followed these pricing threads w/little interest.
I learned how to find the lowest price and life has gone on.

Does the earth move now with Resmed's new policy?
Is this a cpap manufacture epiphany??
Are they doing "us" a favor??
Do we all fling our Xmodel Xpaps and buy Resmed because
we can see the actual price in the cart???
Will carpal tunnel syndrome become a thing of the past for apneacs??
Will the mouse industry need a bail-out, due to less clicking??

....or is this just a large crock of the familiar brown substance, from marketing??

Or due to a XMAS labor shortage did someone slip up and move fresh talent from the mail room to upper management? If so once the weaker brains in upper management find out what he has done while they were out drinking, heads will roll. (At least the ex-mail clerk and the person that moved him up.) Jim

Wow! Those were some nice prices cpap.com was offering!

Wulfman wrote:My apologies to Johnny for posting a link to another seller's site on this forum......but......

I noticed a link to an article within a link that Jules posted in another thread.....so I thought it would be interesting to those of us who have followed the manufacturers' mandatory pricing policies over the years.
Den

More and more manufacturers are setting prices that they don't want the retailers to go below. They have hired subcontractors who have computer programs that check prices on retailer's Web Sites all over the world. They can check thousands of Web Sites a second to find any company selling their products below the price that they want their items sold for. They will give the retailer a warning if they violate the suggested price and if the continue, they will refuse to sell to them. They can't check the price once you put it in your shopping cart because you have now gone from HTTP to HTTPS which is a secure connection that the subcontractor cannot look at.


This is from the Costco web site,


"Electronics Items

Electronics manufacturers sometimes restrict the way prices of their products are advertised.

Because of this, we may show you a price on the item page but when you add it to your cart, the price may be lower."

Ed

kopoloff wrote:Funnily enough, in Australia it is illegal for a manufacturer to set any price controls. They may suggest a 'recommended retail price' but not a minimum, or a fixed price.

K

Actually, I thought it was the same here in the US. I can remember Waaayyyyyyy back when, my parents owned a hardware store, and sold Corningware products. Corningware had the fixed price policy, where retailers could not sell for less than the MSRP. Then, there was an anti-trust type of thing that went down and suddenly mom could sell the stuff for whatever she wanted. Of course, that was 40+ years ago.

And another cycle began ... the US Supreme Court just ruled that some manufacturers could set MAPS earlier this year.

Slinky wrote:And another cycle began ... the US Supreme Court just ruled that some manufacturers could set MAPS earlier this year.

I don't get it really. After all, the manufacturer is getting the same amount of money, regardless. Why should they care what level of profit a retailer is willing to set? Sort of takes the "free" out of "free market", eh?

Lots of discussions about this subject over the years.

The first link is to Jerry's (6PtStar) post with the link to the court decision:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29586&p=254683&hilit=+MAP#p254683

This is rested gal's link to most of the discussions about ResMed's Internet sales pricing policies.

viewtopic.php?p=98895


Den

Debjax wrote:I don't get it really. After all, the manufacturer is getting the same amount of money, regardless. Why should they care what level of profit a retailer is willing to set? Sort of takes the "free" out of "free market", eh?

Deb,
If the guy down the block from your mom's hardware store is selling Corning Ware for 40% off, all her customers will go down the block. One day your mom says to herself, "I've got all this shelf space and money tied up in all this Corning Ware that I'm stocking but I'm not selling any. I'm going to drop Corning and sell XXXware" Next month, the guy down the block decides to sell YYYware. Now Corning has lost market share.

Ed

FoxNewsFan wrote:

Debjax wrote:I don't get it really. After all, the manufacturer is getting the same amount of money, regardless. Why should they care what level of profit a retailer is willing to set? Sort of takes the "free" out of "free market", eh?

Deb,
If the guy down the block from your mom's hardware store is selling Corning Ware for 40% off, all her customers will go down the block. One day your mom says to herself, "I've got all this shelf space and money tied up in all this Corning Ware that I'm stocking but I'm not selling any. I'm going to drop Corning and sell XXXware" Next month, the guy down the block decides to sell YYYware. Now Corning has lost market share.

Ed

Then the customers who DO want Corning find a store that is selling it and they go there....And so goes the free market. Manufacturers and wholesalers should stay out of retail. Let retail worry about their own pricing.