Toshiba just SCREWED all the retailers!

[unreal1080p]

Originally Posted by Dragonraine

Its not the retailers who lose any money on this, its Toshiba. They will be issuing credit to the retailers for X number of dollars on X number of units that are returned/repurchased.

Besides stating the obvious (Toshiba refunding retailers) you are wrong about retailers not losing money:

1) Customer service departments wasting time refunding customers
2) Whenever a customer sets foot back in a store for things of this nature, it's an opportunity for them to change their minds completely: How many are going to simply return the player rather then collect the price difference? You're going to tell me that the retailers don't lose money when this happens?
3) The costs of generating accurate price protection reports (which probably won't be accurate)
4) The costs of claiming the rebates/money back from Toshiba: Disputes of this nature between vendors and retailers are common place and often result in retailers refusing to pay manufacturers on a timely basis until said disputes are settled which leads to manufacturers not sending any more inventory until the overdue bills are paid... it's quite a vicious circle and a costly one at that.
5) The costs of Toshiba denying a certain percentage of those claims because of "technicalities"
6) The costs of the retailer getting his money back 6 months or more later then they actually refunded the customer's money.
7) The customer satisfaction cost of the angry customer having to claim his refund --> The customer feeling that if he was'nt paying attention, the retailer would have gotten away with screwing him out of his hard earned money and charging him too much to begin with (customers are not going to blame the manufacturer for this... they will blame the retailer).

Price cuts like this cost retailers plenty. Only the blind chooses not to see the hidden costs of such drastic price cuts... especially when they happen a few weeks after Xmas. These are not Xmas decorations we are talking about... those are expected to go down in price 50% after Xmas.