I paid £6 each for a scart cable and aerial lead at Currys yesterday.
This morning I was browsing through Poundland and they had them at a pound each!
|
I would not expect scart cables costing only £1 to be of the same quality as the ones you bought from Currys for £6, but I might be wrong.
Some opinions here:
tinyurl.com/3opmb4a
|
In currys you got 2 quids of cable, in poundland you missed out on £0.33 of cable.
I know which i would prefer for quality.
|
I exceedingly doubt that a £1 SCART lead has all pins connected. And quite likely does not have an earth screen.
So it may not support widescreen switching, S-VHS (if you use it) or even RGB, and only have a composite video connection. And if a police car goes by and transmits on the radio - you may get lines on the screen.
You don't need gold plated pins either, and Currys used to be very good at selling a cheap DVD player, and then suggesting a £70 SCART lead 'for the quality'. (Hint - broadcasters don't use these leads).
|
The Curry's ones are a big rip off, the but the poundland ones don't have all the 21 pins connected in most cases. An easy way to tell the quality of a scart lead is by the thickness. That said the £1 shop ones are fine for when quality doesn't matter, e.g a small bedroom tv.
I've bought a few coaxial areal cables from poundshops and they have been as good as the ones you get from Currys etc but not as good quality is making your own with decent cable.
|
|
Thanks - it sounds like it was worth paying extra for the scart but not the coaxial lead. I'll know for again.
|
Why do we seem to think because it costs more it's any better than the cheap one?
Why not try the cheap one i bet you see no differance.
|
>> Why do we seem to think because it costs more it's any better than the
>> cheap one?
>>
>> Why not try the cheap one i bet you see no differance.
Correct, probably see nothing at all come to that.
|
|
Curry's has 1500% markup on their cables if not more. Their USB cables they used to sell for £14.99 I used to pay less than £1 for. If I am paying less than £1 for a single unit, how much they buying the cable for if they buy say 50,000 of them? I wrecked they were paying around 30-60p for them.
|
Perhaps on some computer leads, but no way is their mark up that on some video and audio leads.
As with all retailers though, you do need to watch what you are buying.
|
|
Given that they flog HDMI cables for 70 - 80 quid that can't cost more than a fiver at the absolute outside, and certainly don't give a better picture than a properly made 2 quid one, I'd say their margins are pretty darned high on video cables.
Last edited by: spamcan61 on Mon 29 Aug 11 at 20:59
|
|
I used to work for a hi-fi retailer, and I can confirm there is between 100 and 400% profit margin in all cables and accessories. We used to earn a fortune on the high-end interconnects and speaker cables in particular. A popular £100 set of interconnects that started flying out of the door after a What Hi-Fi award win one year, cost us about £30.
|
I have always suspected some cartel going on with these cables. I bet if I asked one of the major supplies if I could have some stock for my "rattlesdiscountcables.co.uk" site they would tell me to do one if I decided to sell those cables £50 and not £100.
I suspect they make a fortune on cartridges too, I remember when I was 17 needing a new cartridge for my Dual Turntable (before I bought the Project) I had just £17.50 in my pocket and they let me have an OM10 cartridge with stylus for that. The RRP then was around £35 (would be £50+ now).
I really miss the boom years of HIFI separates in the early 2000's when they were still fairly popular but prices have fallen dramatically. Now prices have gone up because they can no longer sell them in the quantities they did. A basic half decent amp will now cost you £250-£300, the same eqevaulent in 2000 was £150. From now one I will only buy second hand amps.
|
>> Curry's has 1500% markup on their cables if not more. Their USB cables they used
>> to sell for £14.99 I used to pay less than £1 for.
Their whole business model seems to be based on selling some 'big ticket' sale price items like laptops, printers, TVs etc. at (presumably) wafer thin margins and making a fortune on the accessories.
|
Yep this is common in a lot of businesses. Their printers for example can be the cheapest of any where but then they will probably make £2 on the printer, try and sell you cartridges and the cable, and they have made £30 on the sale.
The PCs/laptops they sell at low prices are also just a ploy to get you buy their warranty. I have been speccing a Sandybridge system for a customer today, they sell a complete system for around £10 less than I can build it, but my system is of far better quality so much so I can offer a three year on-site warranty for it, which then makes me a lot cheaper than PCWORLD, and I am still making a nice profit on it.
|
And how did you cost your three year warranty?
You did cost it didnt you?
|
Zero some of the stuff I am buying has a five year RMA warranty on it., But it is unlikely anything will fail in those three years anyway apart from the hard drive. The CPU/Motherboard/RAM all have three years on them too. The part that doesn't is the optical drive, which cost £12 to replace.
I am making just over £100 on it, but will transfer their old data across for that as well but I will do it all off site. The warranty I am offering is hardware only (including labour) and most faults on desktops are software related.
Just finding more and more that ready build desktops are cheap for a reason.
|
I thought so, you haven't costed it in. One failure in three years and you have kissed your profit goodbye. And data transfer? How long is that going to take? have you costed that in as well?
You are running a charity there mate.
|
Data transfer takes about an hour at the most, in fact I think they have no more than 20gb. Its just automatic. All I have to do is plug the SATA drive into my caddy.
Its why I am doing it my workshop, I can do that while doing other things. A failure is just a gamble, the most likely part to fail is the hard drive, and that is a bit of a risk, but it will only cost me my time, not any money.
There is now way any failure will cost me anything like £100. It is a little bit of a gamble though, but I am using far better quality parts than you would typically get off the shelf.
|
|
Your business is your time, your time is your money.
|
>> Your business is your time, your time is your money
>> A failure is just a gamble
Are you gambling with your business?
Last edited by: Dave_TDCi on Tue 30 Aug 11 at 10:19
|
if you can get customers who are willing to pay and trust you to build them a system from scratch then stop thinking like a bargain basement outlet.
charge more for your time asap
|
|
At the same time I have to be competitive,, I am still charging just over £100 for a PC build, which is a lot higher than local rates, but the extra service reflects that.
|
Rats, sorry mate, but thats cobblers.
How long does it take to build and load OS, say two hours. An hour to transfer data.
We are now down to 33 quid an hour.
Say it goes wrong once, its three hours work minimum (hour to get there and diagnose, hour to get part changed, hour to get back and fit it.)
We are now down to 16 quid an hour.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 30 Aug 11 at 11:47
|
|
But my point is I will hopefully have other machines to work on while the OS is being installed etc. I have written a nice program in Auto IT which does a lot of the work for me too.
|
>> But my point is I will hopefully have other machines to work on while the
>> OS is being installed etc. I have written a nice program in Auto IT which
>> does a lot of the work for me too.
You wrote it to save time and make money, not give it away. How long did it take you to write? have you costed that time? its an investment to make money not give stuff (your time) away free.
Start thinking like a proper business rats.,
|
Well if I was paying a wage in time, then it probably cost me over £300 to write it, but then I learnt a lot in the process and that also has a value. But if I wasn't doing that I wouldn't have been doing anything else productive.
|
You're giving yourself away. Stop it.
If I were a regular and happy customer of yours, I'd pay £100 more for your PC and warranty than I'd pay for the PC World system. You're giving away that £100.
|
Poundland scart cables and aerial leads - Clk Sec
