GoodBuyGuys Blog

A daily stop on my internet browsing journey is Seth Godin’s blog.  He teaches simple life lessons  from a business person’s point of view and he really speaks my language.  I recommend him highly.

Today  Seth’s posting deals with how a business can keep prices down by having a customer do some of the work.  This is what internet pricing is all about.  When we are able to get you to do most of the time consuming work in setting up an account (read-data entry) and processing payments (read-credit card authorization), then there are savings that can be applied to our pricing.  A more direct  route between us and our customers means a more efficient operation. Thus, a narrower profit margin is acceptable.  No need for a middle man to do any hand holding on either side of the transaction.

We get the same phone call almost every day (different caller-same script).  It always starts out “ I found you on the internet.”  “We are a reseller and I was wondering if you have reseller pricing?“  I patiently try to explain that we do have scaled pricing, but it is based on how much you buy, not who you are.  It’s not like you found us on some sort of “secret” internet.  If you found us online, then so can your customer.

By asking for “reseller pricing” you are asking me to pay you to do work that I have already done-making our company easy to find by anyone who might need our products.

Unless you can convince me that by selling through you that some sort of value is added for the end user, then we will continue to do all we can to avoid the middle man.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

A troubling new pricing trend is developing in online pricing and it’s making things more difficult if you are looking for a deal.

Pressure from manufacturers to control the price that online merchants charge for certain items mean that more and more web sites are no longer posting pricing with their items.

What may first look like an unwillingness of the seller to show you the price may actually be an effort on their part to keep the manufacturer from forcing them to charge a price dictated to them.

When you look at an item on a web site but can’t see the price until you “put it in your shopping cart“, it may be an effort on the merchant’s part to keep the manufacturer from easily seeing what price is being charged.  Because the price doesn’t appear with the item,  it won’t be indexed at popular shopping “bots” like Shopzilla and Pricegrabber, making it a lot harder for the manufacturer to control.

New interpretations of anti-trust law have given the manufacturers a lot more power in dictating prices to sellers.  Posting “lower than approved” pricing at a web site may violate advertising agreements.  This is likely why you can’t see the price until you add the item to a shopping cart.

This makes comparison shopping a whole lot tougher.

Periodically we are approached by manufacturers who would like us to sell their products, but negotiations always quickly end if they attempt to dictate the price we will charge our customers.  So called “MAP” pricing (minimum advertised pricing)does not come into play when we determine how to price what we sell to you.

We will always strive to give you the best price without regard to what the manufacturer thinks we should charge.  If we can take advantage of lower overhead and other efficiencies to offer you a better price than the competition, we are happy to share the savings.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Share your ideas on internet pricing with our readers.

If the password for your bank account is 123456, you’re in good company.  Apparently the need for difficult to guess (read, difficult to hack) passwords is lost on millions of internet users.

As more and more financial and other sensitive transactions migrate to the internet, the need for upgraded security at the user level is lagging dangerously behind.

Recent New York Times research identified about 30 passwords that tens of millions of users turn to over and over.  One of the most popular is “password”.

New tools available to hackers allow automated attacks incorporating the most popular passwords to break into supposedly secure accounts.  Increasing the pool of most popular choices from 30 to 5000 shows that a full 20% of internet users’ passwords are included.

Fast computers coupled with speedy networks give hackers the tools to go after thousands of accounts simultaneously.  Couple this capability with software that can automatically resubmit passwords over and over until access is gained, and the time consuming problem of cracking log ins is not longer an issue.

For secure passwords, always mix numbers, letters and characters and use both upper and lower case.  Use 12 character passwords to protect your most sensitive data and stay away from the most popular 30 choices.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.  Read about our security policy here.

I doubt if I’m the only one that finds irony in Google’s latest customer service problem.  They’re selling phones, but apparently they don’t have any of their own.

The new Nexus One cell phone was released earlier this month, but buyers, some whom have paid over $500.00 for the smartphones, find they are on their own if they have problems.

Not only does Google not provide a customer service phone number, they have announced that buyers should not expect to have emails answered for at least 48 hours.

This has the potential to give Google a real black eye before they even get started with their new hardware sales initiative.  A company with the profits and excess cash flow of Google would have had no problem in financing and developing a customer service operation to support the launch of the Nexus.

It’s hard to know if they were being arrogant, or just naive, but they would have had no difficulty in understanding what sort of customer support would be required to support a new cell phone.  Just visit a Verizon store.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries,  Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords and OnStage Stand mic stands.

Even though our national economic woes continue to depress holiday retail sales, online sales are expected to grow 8% this year.  That’s great news if you, like we, count on internet sales to sustain and grow your business.

Still, there is a big bump in the road before online sales can really take off.  That problem is consumer concerns about security.

We get orders every day from customers who find us on the web, but then insist on calling us to place the order because they are uncomfortable with using their credit card at our web sites.

We’re happy to hear from them, of course, but  they never seem to realize that placing an order at a secure web site is much safer than giving your credit card info to a stranger over the phone.

We host and manage our own e-commerce web sites and can always assure you that you want be presented by any pop ups or phishing scams that originate from our server.

Unfortunately, if you don’t know what to look for, it is difficult to know when you are at a web site where you can make a secure purchase.

When you move from the catalog portion of one of the goodbuyguys web sites to begin an actual checkout, you will see that the “http:” part of the web address at the top of the page, changes to “https:”   That “s” means “secure“.  The “s” is an indicator that the details of your purchase will be encrypted before they are submitted over the web.

You’ll also see a tiny image of a padlock at the end of the address line.  Click on that padlock image if you want to know the details regarding who is certifying that the site is secure.

Here are some more tips to insure the security of your online purchase.

-Never provide your credit number in an email or instant message

-Use long, complicated passwords that use numbers, letters, upper case and lower case

-Purchase only from sites that have an “s” in the address line or show the padlock image

-If you have security concerns but still want to consider making a purchase, look for a phone number

-Check your credit card bill carefully every month.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Permacel gaffers tape,Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Hosa and Entertainment One extension cords andOnStage Stand mic stands.  Your security is our top concern.

Our (and your) security is certified by Usertrust.  You can read more about it here.