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Vestax wholesale fail
So I called in a combined Christmas/birthday/anniversary (they're all within 2 weeks of each other) gift from my partner, and ordered a Vestax VCI-300 on her behalf a few weeks ago from a local online retailer. I emailed them yesterday to find out if the order would arrive in time for Christmas. I just then got a call from the retailer to tell me that they had been waiting on a shipment from Vestax for over 2 months, then today apparently Vestax informed them that their shipment was ready, but instead of retailing for $1150 (Aussie dollars) each as originally quoted, they would now be selling for $1899...
"Are you fucking kidding me?!", I asked.
"I know, it's ridiculous", he responded, "They are clearly not worth that much. So now we have nearly two hundred people that we have to call up and give the bad news. The best we can do to honour your order is give it to you at our cost price of $1550, but I still don't think it is even worth that. In all likelihood we will be cancelling ALL orders from Vestax as they are being very unhelpful in this situation. The best you can hope for is that in a few months after Vestax has sold none of their stock at inflated prices, they will lower the price, at which point we may consider placing orders with them again. So would you like to cancel your order?"
"Yes. Yes I would."
A quick check of other retailers and eBay reveals either "out of stock" or prices inflated by hundreds of dollars over what I would be prepared to pay for it.
Seriously pissed off... words cannot describe the disappointment. There were several parties at which I was going to play during these holidays, which I will now likely have to cancel.
What I'm wondering is, who is to blame here? Are Vestax to blame for vastly increasing their prices despite the retailer's wholesale order being placed months ago? Or is it merely a balanced and justified response to the devaluing of our currency? On the other hand, is the local retailer to blame for allowing me to place an order when they were actually out of stock?
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I am wondering if the original price reflected the price before the Australian $ took that huge slump - if thats the case then its neither the Vestax's fault, nor is it the music stores fault, its just the nature of how the global economic market functions.
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This is true, however our dollar took its biggest dive over a month or so ago, so you would think that Vestax would have updated their pricing accordingly and notified the retailers that had huge orders before now. What a great way to piss off your customers. I'm also not convinced that the price hike is in parity with the dollar slump, but it's hard to tell when the original price was set.
Now I'm struggling to figure out what to do. The options I can think of are:
1) Hold off for an unknown period of time (likely in the order of at least 3-6 months) for the price to maybe come back down due to either currency or lower demand. Kind of sux cos I planned to mix lots during the holidays.
2) Get a VCI-100 and sound card. But I was really sold on the quality, layout and high resolution platters and pitch faders of the VCI-300.
3) Somehow come up with the extra few hundred bucks and get a EKS Otus. Another mixer with hi-res controls, but has an unusual/unfamiliar layout (deck switching) and slightly out of my price range.
Thoughts?
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Get the VCI100. From reading this forum I thought the choice between the 100 and 300 would have been easy.
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Not at all.
It comes down to personal preference and how much you value stuff like quality, layout and high resolution platters and pitch faders, built-in sound card, etc, as myself and others have mentioned before.
You can easily add another small dedicated device (e.g. Korg nanoKontrol) to make up for the 300's lack of effects controls, which is it's major shortcoming IMHO when compared to the 100.
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@Beattz
just read ur post damm m8 thats abit of a kick in the teeth :(
prices have shot up in the UK to I was gona buy serato the other day only to find out that the price of that has gone from £300/£330 back up to £390 :0
If I were you I would hold out on the Vci-300 ( I know what you mean about the high res platters and pitch faders plus the built in sound card is a major bonus ) if you wana quick fix just buy the vci-100 and a sound card like some peeps have said that will get you going and when ( hopefully) the vci-300 drops in price ( the world economy picks up ) ebay the lot and grab yourself a 300 ! happy days
try get yourself a black 100 might hold its price more as they are pretty limited
peace
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@R2D2
I was actually thinking along those lines (get a 100 now, wait for price of 300 to drop), but the local price of 100's has gone up to a grand (from 600-700)!
So I was looking on eBay an hour or so ago and I actually came across a B-stock 300 for AU$1250 including shipping, which is a hundred bucks more than I was gonna get it for before the dramas, so I grabbed it :)
Time to sit by the mail box and play the waiting game......
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Price's have been jumping every where for a while now. I was very lucky and got my VCI-100 off somebody else for 400$, while new would have cost me 650$ CAD. Not as bad as you aussies, but still, for a limited income fellow, it hit kinda hard the wallet. Now I have to wait until Christmas to even start looking at a audio card, since other people come before myself during the festive times.
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Well, there are were some webshops that sold the VCI for just 359 euros. Don't know if they still do that.
(They were getting rid of old stock etc etc)
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the more expensive like the NS7 and the Stanton SC system will be going for crazy high prices here