The dangers of small markets

This week I've been helping my dad update some of his computer hardware, so we've been taking some of our older computers apart and trying to gather up enough hardware to make a pretty decent computer.  We decided that all we needed to buy to update one of his computers was more RAM.

This evening we set off to Shawnee, the closest town of a decent size, to find a computer hardware store.  It turns out there really isn't a good option there either.  We found a store called "Computer Masters" that sold some basic computer hardware and did repairs on computers.

While we looked around before we were helped, I noticed that they didn't have a whole lot of selection in hardware, they more or less just had 8-10 of the same item for each category.  I looked at some of the prices and thought, "Wow, that's a little higher than I expected."  Then we asked the guy who was helping us if we could get two 512 MB sticks of DDR 400 RAM.  He quickly pulled it out of his cabinent and told us it would be 70 bucks for each stick, which would be $140 for the whole thing.  He then added that it would be $90 bucks for a 1 GB stick of RAM.

I was in shock. You see, after just buying and building a computer out of parts I knew that this was way above market value.  I called him on it and he got defensive, telling me that he had been doing this for a living for 20 years and he knew a lot about computers, how his RAM was better than the stuff that I would buy off of the internet, all sorts of stuff.

I was upset, until I got home.  Then I looked up the prices for his RAM. That frustrated me even more. I could buy the exact same hardware he claimed was worth $140 for only $58 at newegg (newegg.com) There was also 5 dollars shipping, but no tax, whereas he would've charged tax on a $140 item, which runs up to be around $11.  I also would've purchased one retail item, whereas he could purchase the same hardware in bulk for a cheaper rate.  He had marked up the price at over 250% the cost that I could personally order the exact same model and brand of RAM.

It sickens me for people to take advantage of people who don't know any better.  Plenty of consumers in the Shawnee, OK area that want to upgrade their computers could well spend 2 and a half times the amount that they need to only so that he can make a bigger buck.

The real kicker was that he claimed to know more than I did about memory and was dead wrong.  When I told him I could find a better deal, he told me that the Corsair RAM I bought was junk compared to the Kingston RAM he bought.  Let me say that I give a slight edge to Kingston, they do have good products.  However, after looking at fairly competitive products, I discovered that the Corsair memory sold at 3 dollars cheaper, had the same
customer satisfaction rate as the Kingston alternative, and actually had slightly faster access rates.  Not to mention that the top selling item for that category was Corsair, and not Kingston.  So it was cheaper, faster, had the same satisfaction rate, and out sold the RAM that he claimed was better than the "junk".

I'm sorry, I just had to throw my experience out there as a warning to those that don't know a lot about computers.  If you go into a local computer store, there is a good chance you will get taken for a ride.  It's a sad reality, and I do feel for local business owners, it is tough to compete with online vendors, but trying to pull a fast one on your customers is not the way to fix the problem.  A 150% markup is inexcuseable and I strongly reccomend avoiding Computer Masters for your computer hardware needs.

Had I not known what was fair value, I would've spent 80 dollars more than I should've today, and that is just not a good feeling.