Originally posted by jrforman I was curious about this too. I got mine on the 15th and I am wondering if it was a fluke with Amazon or not. No one is showing any that I have found - still saying not yet available. Hmmm.
Nah, no fluke really. You would have been one of the early pre-orderers who threw whatever asking price at them no questions asked.
And rightly, they honoured the delivery from first round delivered-to-them stock - as they should.
You deserve no less and so get your 15 minutes of fame bragging rights that you paid for.
But the waters can, and do quickly get very murky after that; as queue jumpers wane, replaced by tentative buyers starting to fish for potential discounts, and with less likelihood to put money up front and wait... until?
Instead they hop to the next, and the next... dealer, only prepared to show colour of money when it comes with guaranteed instant gratification, plus some small carrot along with that nasty stick.
Dealers know this game first hand, and they have to haggle as best wholesale discounts they can off Pentax distributors, based on quantities they believe they can shift in a reasonable timeframe.
Otherwise you easily get stuck with goods that can't compete in a fickle, sliding prices market. And have to firesale.
The bigger dealers (like Amazon Direct themselves), with bigger customer bases and confidence have more haggling power in that area - but it all takes time to negotiate, Pentax would naturally be reluctant too.
Then there's the old 'waiting on factory production to catch up and supply' cliched excuse, "because of unexpected high initial demand", which mfgrs use.
Which as we all know when translated simply means: Yet more spin-doctor bullshit to try and spruik up more buyer interest and demand.
Sure they could be honest and say: We just couldn't take the chance of being straddling with unpredicted over capacity when demand naturally slows. But being honest ain't part of the cat & mouse game is it?
.R.