RH Campbell - Talk about price gouging

OK- so he sells high priced equipment. That helps everyone. Why? Because folks like him make it easier for folks who price things reasonably to sell more. He is also raising the average price that folks see when they do a search for item prices. Let him sell high- it just gives the rest of us yet another comparison as to why our stuff is such a good deal.

He also provides the following information:

Pricing is NOT the lowest you will find on the internet; however, all equipment comes with full support from someone (me) with 12 years of professional alarm installation experience, and over a 1000 installations done. This may be worth the difference to you.

Translation: He answers the phone, or returns your phone call/e-mail in a timely manner.........

Like you, I personally don't care WHAT price someone eles sells their parts or services for. But I think what the original poster might be alluding to ..... is that Robert is always talking about how other companys overprice their services and parts and give very little to the end user in comparison to what HE provides. He's always saying that other companys "rip off" their clients in various ways ..... that he doesn't. And here, he is apparently not carrying that philosophy over into his on line sales. He'll "give away" a "free" keypad to one of his clients as part of a service call but charges twice the price for the same keypad that all he has to do is drop ship to a customer. This could certainly be described as a little bit hypocritical ...... Seems to me.

Actually your right ! Just about anyone else's prices are a good deal compared to mine when comparing just the prices themselves. I originally put up a DIY page on my website some time ago, and as I say on my site, my prices are high....VERY high. But if you also read correctly, and were not so quick to take things out of context, you will also see there are conditions... I sell only in the local Ottawa area, I can design the system for him on site, and I supply TOTAL support to the DIY'er, even delivering the equipment. I will assist the client in just about everything except running the wire and actually doing the installation work. And I tell him right up front that my prices are higher than he can get on the internet (or just about anywhere else for that matter). There's nothing hidden here !

So if he still chooses to buy DIY from me, he knows what to expect, including premium pricing. I will also be the first to tell you that I have sold very little, with the exception of two complete systems, which included a couple of full days of my time handholding both of them during installation, including on site visitation and system design. So if you factor in many hours of support, the prices are no way near as high as they might seem on the surface. Both clients paid me just about what they could have had another company install a full system for actually. But the hooker that always goes with that one is the industry standard long term contract !! One client didn't want monitoring, and the other chose to go for $9.95 monitoring from The Monitoring Station in Toronto. I told him that if he wanted me to monitor it, he would lose the ability to go into low level programming and this didn't suit him.

This page was an experiment put up some time ago to see just what the DIY market is really looking for....low prices like many give over the internet, or high prices INCLUDING a high personal level of support from a professional installer. It seems they are looking for low prices primarily !! So be it ! DIY'ers seem to feel they can do things right off the bat the way you and I have spent years learning. They quickly find out they can't and in the two cases I sold too, my expertise after the fact was well worth the extra money (their words, not mine....)

This is also in keeping with the way I sell professional security services, and there there clearly IS a market for that......full but fair market pricing for the alarm system, including physical security options and locksmithing work, and low pricing for a bundled package of service, warranty and monitoring for $10 less than national retail on a month to month basis. The clients who come to me know they can avoid long term contracts and get a very real, personal level of support with their system. It seems, there is a great demand for that in the market niche where people want a reliable system so they can get on with other more important things in their lives.

So criticize all you want. On the surface, you are right ! But in fairness, put it in perspective. And frankly, for all the sales the page has made in the DIY market where price seems to be the ONLY consideration, I might just as well take it down. But if it helps you guys in any way, I'll leave it up.

And one other bit of advice ! Read, then THINK a little about things before you stick your foot in your mouth....:))

RHC

I think you're admonishing the wrong guy- the OP may have been criticising, but I merely stated that overpriced items are a good thing for those of us who charge fair market value. It's a free market society, and I like it that way. Nope, the high priced sellers help me- it's the lowball discounters who hurt my pocketbook, so Thank You.

Actually, my comments were directed to both posts, but aimed primarily at the other post, and no real criticism was really intended - just a tongue in cheek comment. I'm not really in the DIY market at all; as I said, I just put the page up as an experiment to prove a couple of things to myself. Frankly, I don't care about selling DIY; I'm much too busy putting in professional systems to ever be concerned with that tiny part of the security business.

And you're welcome....:))

RHC

If you guys recall I had a working DIY site up for about a year. Actually it was up longer, but as a funtioning cart system for a year. I was doing a couple thousand a month on it and every month was a little bigger than the previous month. What I found was that I was spending too much time on tech support for my DIY clients and my contracting business was starting to suffer. Basically I came to the same conclusion you did.

P.S. For those who just want to sell some product on-line you can start with a handfull of static price pages and a phone number. I did and I would have people call, e-mail, and fax orders. However, when I went to an interactive cart system sales tripled almost instantly.

P.P.S. For those who have the time to set it up and work with it, there aren't many better deals on shopping carts than Click Cart Pro. Its in expensive and extremely flexible. Almost too flexible for some as the complexity can be daunting. (For the website owner not the customer)