If I had products to sell, I'd want to make as much money as possible. I wouldn't set them moderate to low as an act of kindness. This is a business for grown up people, it's not like selling football stickers to your friends at school. Forum banter with ocuk staff doesn't entitle you to mates rates.
There is two sides to a coin.
If computer components typically made us say 50% which they absolutely do not, in fact not even remotely close, though some people actually believe there is such margin, there truly is not in components.
However if margins were even just say 20%, let alone 50% then the need to take opportunities to make more profit, or known as gouging here would not be so.
But the simple facts are our average margin, including rebates on graphics cards is typically 8-10% which all our overheads have to come out off and the general cost of running business, plus merchant fees tends to average just under 4% so in the end the margins are quite slim. That is why when opportunities as a business come along to turn say 10% margin into 20% of course we take it, if we did not then our margins could and would slip, all it takes is to lose say 2% overall margin and then we have to look at ways to cut back, maybe job losses or a service component reduced and OcUK's service is exceptional and one of the best if not best out there.
Though we have high margin areas to help boost our overall margins, the simple facts are the majority of OcUK's business is components and when were selling CPU's with 0-5% margin, graphics cards with 4-8% margin typically, then of course when opportunities arise, they are taken to try and keep our business growing or at least stable, of course it will just be put as gouging but the simple facts are that component margin is single digit if you want to remain competitive in this cut throat market so any opportunity to make additional margin or pull more customers from competitors it is taken. Now that latter part could be argued so keep price low so customers don't go elsewhere, but simple facts are at product launch, stock is king, once supply is good then we tend to be very price competitive at which point as so clearly pointed out here people buy when prices are competitive.
Some may complain, or state as gouging but as a business we price based on supply and demand plus in this situation though we know a second wave is incoming, we actually have no idea how many we are gonna sell and we'd typically rather sell less than what we can supply rather than sell thousands which we cannot supply. We won't have any clearer indication on numbers and true volume until after Chinese New Year, as such if your after the best price, simply wait until end of February as in theory the prices should improve then, unless the product becomes like 1080ti where everyone wants it but there is simply not enough stock to go round.
People complained about 1080Ti's going upto 1k and beyond, but again an opportunity arises we take it and look were sold out. But on the flip side we might have stock of say a product like 1070 or 570 and have to sell it at a loss now, so where we lose on one hand, we make back on another.
