Viking Direct rip off on HP toner

BartM

I was checking the prices for an hp 78a toner online (I typed hp ce278a on google.ie) and clicking on various sites - one of them was a viking direct advertisement and the price was €75.13 (not a bad price in fairness but I still wanted to check if I could get it cheaper). I scrolled down and among other results I came across viking again (it wasn't an advertisment but a normal link to their site) but the price shown was €115.99!!! What a joke - so it means if I come to buy something on viking via an ad I'm getting it €40 less than if I would be a regular customer. This is seriously wrong lads - so you want to me to come to your online store via an ad, get something fairly cheap and become a loyal customer who will buy stuff of you cause you let me think that this is a site with good prices and when it happens you serve me rip off prices as a reward for becoming your customer. Lovely.

rubadub

BartM wrote: »

you let me think that this is a site with good prices .

Don't let the marketing men make you presume anything. This just shows you should always shop around, even in the same shop.

In tesco they have brazil nuts in several sections with huge differences in prices. In atlantic homestore I found phosphoric acid in 3 different sections, again huge price differences.

markdrummer

BartM wrote: »

I was checking the prices for an hp 78a toner online (I typed hp ce278a on google.ie) and clicking on various sites - one of them was a viking direct advertisement and the price was €75.13 (not a bad price in fairness but I still wanted to check if I could get it cheaper). I scrolled down and among other results I came across viking again (it wasn't an advertisment but a normal link to their site) but the price shown was €115.99!!! What a joke - so it means if I come to buy something on viking via an ad I'm getting it €40 less than if I would be a regular customer. This is seriously wrong lads - so you want to me to come to your online store via an ad, get something fairly cheap and become a loyal customer who will buy stuff of you cause you let me think that this is a site with good prices and when it happens you serve me rip off prices as a reward for becoming your customer. Lovely.

they are doing this for years and customer have not even coped it.They were caught out in the states doing this by government dept and are being taken to court rip off viking

rugbyfan82

I see what you are saying rubadub, but I wonder are those price discrepancies down to out of date price displays rather than charging different prices for the exact same product? In a physical environment like a shop, I wonder how they differentiate between where someone picks the product up in store when they are charging them.

In the ecommerce environment it is so much easier to charge different prices for the same product - you just use different landing pages. It is easy to have the same product but with different pages, a simple setting on most ecommerce platforms. This is normally used for testing the effects of changes to page layout on customer behaviour - eg colour changes, making a button bigger or smaller etc..

Users who click on Google ads are often new visitors or new potential customers on a site, so its understandable that you want to give them attractive pricing to lure them in. If they buy on your site through ads more than once - then the next time they come to Google they will probably search for your brand name, or type your site url directly in the address bar. Boom - you've got a returning customer, showing loyalty to your brand or service. Hard word done then, so now it’s time to screw them! :mad:

I guarantee that you cannot browse to the cheaper product from within the Viking site - its hidden, and only visible if you click on a link to the URL (the google ad). What BartMan has picked up on here, is a deliberate pricing policy at Viking to charge new customers less than existing customers. What I can't fathom though is the huge price difference - 40 Euro on a toner cartridge. :eek: If it was 5euro... These are something that people replace regularly, and are quite price sensitive I would imagine.

God only knows how much profit they are squeezing out of their existing customers, to subsidise the new customer pricing, so they can start screwing them too! From a business point of view - promote the genius who thought of this one! From a decency and rewarding customer loyalty point of view, it really is low... If they can afford to charge new customers that price - you can be assured they are not doing so at a loss!

Look on the bright side though - if you the loyal customer buy two or more of the 40euro more expensive toners, they will throw in a corkscrew set for FREE! Wow - I take it all back - they really are a decent bunch!!
Where would you be without a corkscrew set in the office!! For those wine tasting Friday afternoons!



They must be living in a bubble over at Viking, as there are lots of alternatives available online in Ireland, with far more competitve pricing... They are not the only player in town!!

markdrummer

i just checked another 10 items and the same thing for all. Lower price on the ads but visted the site like a regular customer and screwed on price:eek:
These guys really are ripping off there regular customers.Wake up viking customers

ejmaztec

markdrummer wrote: »

i just checked another 10 items and the same thing for all. Lower price on the ads but visted the site like a regular customer and screwed on price:eek:
These guys really are ripping off there regular customers.Wake up viking customers

I stopped using Viking a long time ago, with much of the stuff that I used to get from them, more reasonably priced in my local one-off office-supplies shop.

Considering their buying power, they should be an awful lot cheaper, but they're far from it. They charge ludicrous prices across the board.

savvysue

I accidently logged onto vikingdirect in the uk, added my office depot industrial tape clear 50 mm x 100 m (6 rolls per pack) q21-3404522 into my basket among other items and when I went to checkout I was advised that i was a vikingdirect.ie customer and would have to log in to the correct site. I did just that and added the same tape into my cart, only to see that the price was £6.49 per 6 rolls on the uk site and wait for it.... €15.39 on the Irish site. (this is the discounted price for ordering 60 rolls-qty 10 packs!) I didn't even bother to check the other items! This is the last time I will ever log on there and I was unwhittingly ordering from them for the past 10 years! Buyers beware is all I can say!

rob316

I work in the office supplies trade, as part of an independent dealer we actively discourage people from using Viking. Rip off is given a whole new meaning when Viking comes into play.

They sell the branded items at reasonably good prices (bar toners and inks) and furniture very cheap but the margins they have marked up on Office Depot product are nothing short of criminal. We are talking in excess of 5-600% probably way more in other cases there would be plenty of examples to show.

Another thing we see is copies of Viking orders sent into us (for price comparison) and the prices you see are much higher than the prices if you just browsed through the website (these would be from long standing customers of there's). Examples like €45 for a box of paper and then if Joe Bloggs browsed the website for the same thing its €14.99!

Buy Irish people, your local stationery company will move heaven and earth for your business in the current climate.