Date: Mon, 27 May 2002 11:53:23 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Robin Subject: Re: Binoculars In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 07:38 AM 05/27/2002 , you wrote: >Jason, > >I would go to Penn Camera or a similar store; all of the bird stores >mark up their binocs to an obscene 100-200% of what you would pay there >or through mail order. > > >********************* >Frank Boyle Excuse me, but I can't let this pass. I work at one of those "bird stores" and while I'm aware that our prices are higher than you can find online, I also know that it's because the small volume retailers get shafted by the supplier. On the higher end bins like Swarovski, our mark up is about 20%-25%. I've seen the invoices that come in from places like Swarovski and Zeiss, I KNOW what our wholesale price is, and I know what we're selling them for. Because I'm working for someone who is a Swarovski retailer, I'm eligible to purchase optics directly from Swarovski for 10% less than what they sell them to my store for. That "discounted" price is considerably higher than what the very same bin can be purchase for from Eagle Optics or other online retailers. And that's dealing directly with Swarovski. It's irritating and frustrating when someone circulates an uninformed opinion like this as fact. It's also irritating when someone comes in and takes up 2-3 hours of OUR time, gratis, learning about the bins, then is too cheap to pay for the education they've gotten and head off to some place like Eagle Optics. If you're going to purchase from an online store, get your education there. What, they won't/can't tell you anything about them? Then I guess you get what you pay for. Only my rather irritated opinion Robin Alexandria, VA ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================