Viking Direct online overpricing strategy

BartM

Well they did again (or more likely they have been doing it continuously...) A friend of mine came across this today and emailed it to me (he remembered the HP toner case which I posted a couple of months ago) - he was looking for a Samsung printer and he came across an Viking Direct advertisement for it on Google and when clicked into it, it showed the price of 89.75 which in fairness wasn't a bad deal but then he visited the viking site directly and boy was he surprised when he saw the same printer for... 149.99! No, they didn't change the price - they simply choose to put a low price in an ad and a 60% extra if you are shopping directly on their website. I wonder how their loyal registered customers would feel if they found out about this strategy since they probably browse the viking site directly and not through paid ads? I mean how bad for publicity can it be? I personally think this completely undermines the company's reputation! Pricing should be really one thing that needs to be clear to customers. Shopping around is definitely something worth doing but the fact that you can be hugely overpriced for the same product within the same internet shop is a huge misunderstanding to say the least. Fool me once... Shame on you viking direct! Again!

amdublin

So your friend found a special offer reduced cheaper price and you are on here complaining about a rip off

BartM

I think you completely misunderstood my post - I am not complaining about my friend finding a better offer or whatever it is that you think. I am writing about a major online retailer screwing its customers! It's like if you were a regular customer at let's say tesco - you always use the front door to enter it and you go the aisle in which you want to buy a product, for example washing powder and take it off the shelf in that aisle. But you don't know that there is a shelf in the very same shop that has the same washing powder but it is 40% cheaper than the one in the main aisle.
This is just to give an idea of the situation I described - in a normal shop if a product is on offer it is the same price through out the whole shop no matter which aisle you pick it from. So if i as a registered user of viking direct browsed their site looking for a printer and then did a search for that printer on google to see other suppliers and came across the same printer on the same viking direct site but significantly cheaper than when browsing their store directly how would this feel like?

amdublin

It would feel like i should be shopping around, and doing google searches, instead of shopping in the same place all the time.

sandin

BartM wrote: »

I think you completely misunderstood my post - I am not complaining about my friend finding a better offer or whatever it is that you think. I am writing about a major online retailer screwing its customers! It's like if you were a regular customer at let's say tesco - you always use the front door to enter it and you go the aisle in which you want to buy a product, for example washing powder and take it off the shelf in that aisle. But you don't know that there is a shelf in the very same shop that has the same washing powder but it is 40% cheaper than the one in the main aisle.
This is just to give an idea of the situation I described - in a normal shop if a product is on offer it is the same price through out the whole shop no matter which aisle you pick it from. So if i as a registered user of viking direct browsed their site looking for a printer and then did a search for that printer on google to see other suppliers and came across the same printer on the same viking direct site but significantly cheaper than when browsing their store directly how would this feel like?

Tesco do the same thing. the OH gets vouchers in the post from tesco every so often and these can save her say €1 off a washing powder. The offer is just for her and everyone else pays the shelf price.

Viking send out loads of catalogues and put different offers on different catalogues and tries to get you to become a customer of theirs.

BTW, the clp320 is not value at €89 or €149. Far better printers out there for similar money.