[eddie1960]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I bought a camera from them and they didn't have the lens in stock. It was a price quote for the FA43 which was unaffected by this pricing policy. so I'm not sure what service they provided me.

I do agree that something needed to be done about worldwide pricing discrepancies and I'm not appalled at the 15-25% price increases. But something isn't on the level when US sellers are able to sell the DA* zooms for nearly half of the new price and still make some money. Something else is going on with those price increases.

I doubt they were making much at the prices on the 16-50 I would bet no more than 10-12 % tops.
Your original post sounded like you shopped it local then ordered international BTW

I also have agreed the DA* increases seem too big and need a reset. that will likely happen. but not until the policy is really firmly in place.
If you bought the camera local that was actually a good thing. Problem is a lot of people go to the local shop, do the research and get the help then go home and order online from the states . If you import from another country it is still considered grey product. Local service may still service under the terms of the international warranty but they may also charge a fee for this (Pentax Canada does ) because warranties are mostly funded by the local distributor not head office in Japan

[Blue]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. I bought a camera from them and they didn't have the lens in stock. It was a price quote for the FA43 which was unaffected by this pricing policy. so I'm not sure what service they provided me.

I do agree that something needed to be done about worldwide pricing discrepancies and I'm not appalled at the 15-25% price increases. But something isn't on the level when US sellers are able to sell the DA* zooms for nearly half of the new price and still make some money. Something else is going on with those price increases.

I bet the Vietnamese workers assembling the lenses aren't being overly compensated either.

[monochrome]

from the contractors av web site

they don't come up as an authorized web retailer on Pentax's site and it looks like they are not authorized to me

It was a rhetorical question. Sorry - I should have added, "Doesn't look like it to me."

The query suggests this proves the UPP prices are too high - "See!! The market is already reacting.!! - Members who are obsessed with these price changes continue to grasp for a proof that Pentax is wrong to do this - and in so trying, they expose the very reason it has to happen. For whatever reason they refuse to accept that this is a step in a long journey. There is another step after this one. Eventually we will start to see the intended destination.

To be clear, Contractor's A/V is not a Dealer. They are an opportunist, reselling something they bought at liquidation price from a dealer who was overstocked (often intentionally over-ordering to get bracket pricing), maybe BestBuy, maybe any one of a host of sellers. Even B&H, Adorama and Amazon have to compete with these resellers. Imagine that - Amazon could end up a Preferred Dealer if they don't have to compete with the gray market. Will anyone who decried Jeff Bezos' success come back here and say, "You were right?" Hell No! He's an evil whoring capitalist helping Pentax rape their customers (to quote an un-named member).

If Pentax wants to re-brand itself in the United States as a credible, premium brand and offer all the improvements people here want, and warranties, and service, and advertising, and presence, and FFS FF (all of which I am convinced Pentax will do over coming quarters) - they cannot allow these parasites to continue to bottom-feed the prices of their products.

Once they have cleared the channel of all these gray market items - which they are doing this spring, by establishing MSRP as the Unilateral Price (which intentionally, temporarily shuts down sales) - they will then begin the process of establishing the accepted "street" prices for their gear. Dealers will buy inventory. Pentax will schedule Co-Op Rebate sales. If a dealer becomes overstocked Pentax will authorize a dealer-sponsored sale for x number of units at y price for z weeks or days.

Ipso facto they are managing thier own brand globally again.

Those members who insist that Pentax should ahve made the aforementioned improvements before "raising the prices" misunderstand the sequence of actions Pentax is taking. At the end they will provide us precisely what we have asked for all these years - but we'll pay a price for their gear that allows a fair profit doing it. That's what we asked for. That's what we'll get. Accept it or move on. I'll take that deal every day so long as it means Pentax survives.

In the interest of keeping the hornet's nest at rest, I refrain from posting my refrain. Read my sig.

And smile for a minute - literally, Go Smile, For a Minute. It helps.

[monochrome]

I bet the Vietnamese workers assembling the lenses aren't being overly compensated either.

Straw Man. Waiting for the knockdown punch.

[Blue]

Straw Man. Waiting for the knockdown punch.

I bet the folks in the Vietnam plant would disagree with you if they saw the price of a DA* 60-250/4 at present. The fact of the mater is, it is this kind of manufacturing move by American manufacturer that feeds the Wal-Fart monster that has contributed to the demise of traditional shops in middle America.

[monochrome]

I bet the folks in the Vietnam plant would disagree with you if they saw the price of a DA* 60-250/4 at present. The fact of the mater is, it is this kind of manufacturing move by American manufacturer that feeds the Wal-Fart monster that has contributed to the demise of traditional shops in middle America.

Volume-based wholesale price brackets killed the traditional shop in every business sector in the country, beginning in the late 70's. In the 1980 recession my father had a grow or die moment - every one of his office furniture manufacturers raised their minimums (actually, they raised the wholesale prices on small-volume brackets) just like Hoya did to camera stores.

My father bought two struggling competitors, rearranged his dealer agreements and managed to stay in business until he could sell out in the late 90's. Those were hot-dog and beans times for us, but he made payroll every week for 48 people.

Walmart merely took advantage of the opportunity and the propensity of people to spend $15 on gasoline to save $14 on their purchases.

P.S. If you purchased 100 shares of Walmart on the Initial Public Offering at $16.50 in October, 1970 and held it through all the ensuing splits, you now own 102,400 shares of Walmart. It closed at $62.06 today. You can do the math.

There are 748 living people who can say they bought shares on the IPO and have never sold..

[abacus07]

I bet the folks in the Vietnam plant would disagree with you if they saw the price of a DA* 60-250/4 at present. The fact of the mater is, it is this kind of manufacturing move by American manufacturer that feeds the Wal-Fart monster that has contributed to the demise of traditional shops in middle America.

this is not related at all to the topic. Your complaint is true about pretty much every electronic you buy.

If big box stores hadn't hurt small B&M they still would have been destroyed by the internet. Pentax seems to be trying to hit the reset switch with this pricing policy. It's already happened and there is no going back.

[monochrome]

I bet the folks in the Vietnam plant would disagree with you if they saw the price of a DA* 60-250/4 at present. The fact of the mater is, it is this kind of manufacturing move by American manufacturer that feeds the Wal-Fart monster that has contributed to the demise of traditional shops in middle America.

Uhmmm, Pentax is not an American manufacturer.

And the Vietnamese assembler isn't making any more nor any less money than he was before the US prices changed. This has ZERO effect on the Vietnamese assembler. And ZERO effect on Pentax.

Of course the product you (I believe) produce has what marginal utility in our current society?

Just for transparency, there are 6 members of my extended family at this generation level. Five are tenured college faculty, All five have a Ph.D. One is a Department Chair. One is Chief of Thoracic Surgery at a teaching hospital. One is a theoretical mathematician. One is one of 6 people in the world who can read Acadian and is cataloging 60,000 tablets plundered from a Mesopotamian dig in 1920 by a team from Helsinki, the British Museum and Yale. One is a published novelist several times over.

I'm the one not smart enough, so I get paid by a for-profit LLC.

Next.

[Docrwm]

Uhmmm, Pentax is not an American manufacturer.

And the Vietnamese assembler isn't making any more nor any less money than he was before the US prices changed. This has ZERO effect on the Vietnamese assembler. And ZERO effect on Pentax.

Next.

"ZERO effect on Pentax" Really? Wow, and here all this time I thought you had argued that this was central to the Master Plan by Pentax to have a direct impact on them and their ability to provide Peace in Our Time! Glad to know that you have given up on the Pie-in-the-Sky-By-and-By view of this as somehow an anointed plan.

Oh, and the lizard often will tell you that he is related to T-Rex.

[Blue]

Uhmmm, Pentax is not an American manufacturer.

Ummmm . . . show me where I ever said they were. Go back and look at my post and you will see I wrote: its the kind of manufacturing move . . .

And the Vietnamese assembler isn't making any more nor any less money than he was before the US prices changed. This has ZERO effect on the Vietnamese assembler. And ZERO effect on Pentax.

That is where Pentax assembles their lenses. Had Ned said, the cost increase came because we were more equitable with our Vietnamese workers in our lens plant, and therefore raised prices, it would have been understandable. Instead, it appears that the extra money will remain with the current retailers in the existing network.

Of course the product you (I believe) produce has what marginal utility in our current society?

I am a college professor and scientist (entomologist). I train Ph.D. and M.S. students and serve as adviser and major adviser on their thesis and dissertation committees. I am on the graduate faculty at 2 major universities.

Just for transparency, there are 6 members of my extended family at this generation level. Five are tenured college faculty, All five have a Ph.D. One is a Department Chair. One is Chief of Thoracic Surgery at a teaching hospital. One is a theoretical mathematician. One is one of 6 people in the world who can read Acadian and is cataloging 60,000 tablets plundered from a Mesopotamian dig in 1920 by a team from Helsinki, the British Museum and Yale. One is a published novelist several times over.

I'm the one not smart enough, so I get paid by a for-profit LLC.

Next.

I am not going to get into the 1 up thing.

[Blue]

this is not related at all to the topic. Your complaint is true about pretty much every electronic you buy.

If big box stores hadn't hurt small B&M they still would have been destroyed by the internet. Pentax seems to be trying to hit the reset switch with this pricing policy. It's already happened and there is no going back.

Since the Pentax lens are assembled in Vietnam, and the price increase in lenses isn't related to the manufacture of said lenses, it is pertinent to the topic in this thread.

[monochrome]

I respect your academic credntials - and I wasn't attempting to one-up you. I was placing myself.

My father was a dealer-retailer. He made profits sometimes. He ate hot dogs sometimes. But he always made payroll for his employees - even in the months he didn't make payroll for himself. He would have taken umbrage at the implication that it is bad to let the dealers make a fair margin.

The customer may come first, but the owner has a seat at the table.

[Blue]

I respect your academic credntials - and I wasn't attempting to one-up you. I was placing myself.

My father was a dealer-retailer. He made profits sometimes. He ate hot dogs sometimes. But he always made payroll for his employees - even in the months he didn't make payroll for himself. He would have taken umbrage at the implication that it is bad to let the dealers make a fair margin.

The customer may come first, but the owner has a seat at the table.

I have had craftsmen in my family most of them are deceased now. I know how hard they worked not to mention the concept called workmanship which was a big deal to them.

[Docrwm]

A workman is worthy of his hire, fine. This isn't about that at all. Adorama nor B&H nor Amazon asked for these prices, Pentax dictated them. Those retailers were setting prices via the free market UNTIL Pentax imposed price control. So don't boo-hoo and try and say "poor retailer" because they could choose to raise rates or stop selling Pentax if they weren't clearing a net profit. They didn't and the gyrations of Amazons automated pricing seem to indicate that sales have tanked on Pentax lenses, so where are their profits now?

[Blue]

Our big announcement from Ricoh this month was a the MSRP price jack and the Nikon people got this new entry level dSLR announced.

Nikon's New Entry-Level D3200 DSLR Packs a 24-Megapixel Sensor | PCWorld

Adorama is taking pre-orders for it.

Adorama & Nikon


I wonder if Adorama is taking pre-orders for the Pentax announcement. Pentax> < Consumer