Newsgroups: rec.radio.amateur.misc

I can echo that.... I am *CHEAP*, I guess, by that definition.  I rather would
like to be called frugal or even a good steward of my $$$.

I can partly agree with Jeff, the writer of who I remember to be the
initiator of this thread, and I believe I can speak with *some* degree of
knowledge.  Many companies charge what they believe the market will bear for 
their product.  This price must include the cost of development, amortized
over a reasonable number of product produced and sold.  It must also include
the cost of manufacture, overhead, advertizing, etc etc.  This has been beat
to death in some of the responses.  A company MUST charge for this or they
will soon be out of business.  The biggie is *what the market will bear*.

What the difference is, is the value that is added to this, over and above
the "fair market value" that I believe Jeff is squirming about.  In my business,I uncover many prices that were poorly negotiated by a previous buyer.  In some
cases we were paying more than twice the present cost.  Why?  The buyer didn't
know the value of the product he was purchasing.  Read that line again........

When I requoted the *same* series of parts with other suppliers of that type of
service and confronted the original supplier with a ballpark of their numbers,
their reply was- "impossible".  I contracted the parts with a new supplier who
provided me with the same high level of technology, quality, reliability, and
dependability.  The next year, the original supplier came back and admitted he
could beat the new supplier's quote and still make a profit.

This original supplier was charging what the market will bear.  Very common, 
especially with a state of the art product line that is sold to a specialized
industry.  Hams, boaters, pilots, etc can all be considered a *specialized*
industry and therefore companies that make products to support that insustry 
have comparatively little competition.

Pricing strategies are very complicated, and negotiation from a buyers point
of view must be as complicated and hard nosed as that of the manufacturer/
seller.  BUT..... don't we all fall into the trap of MAKING UP OUR MINDS ON
*ONE* SPECIFIC MANUFACTURER/MODEL, and get upset when the seller, who can
read us like a book, won't budge on price?  "This is what the catalog price
is. My boss won't let me charge a penny less... we must make a profit you
know".

I guess my bottom line is, if we are in a pricy hobby and are unwilling or
unable to produce an equivalent to the latest and greatest state of the art
wizbang gizmo, we should either try to negotiate a better price, settle for
a used one (they are considerably cheaper that way), not buy one at all, or
find a different manufacturer that makes a Ford instead of a Rolls.  Sure,
we all want the Rolls (or whatever your fill in the blank is) but we can't
all afford one and must settle for less.  Maybe that way, you get what you
want and give the manufacturer a signal that his price is too high.  It
might help to send the manufacturer of the Rolls a letter stating why you
bought the MF% instead of the AE* TNC.  But that would cost $0.29 plus
paper and time and gasoline and wear and tear on the vehicle, ad nausium-
and all of us amateurs are cheap skinflints like me, so...........