Did anyone else notice the price increase, I think it happened today.

From what i understand previous prices of Dec/Jan were

Portal approx $141.99
Gateway approx $205.99

new prices quoted at shaw and bestbuy are now

Portal approx $177.99
Gateway approx $319.99

I'm pretty happy I purchased my gateway+2 portals when I did as it turns out I saved approx $210 after tax.

But ya just asking if anyone saw it.

I'm guessing the price increase could be to do with the turmoil to the technology sector in the thailand flood.

wow, I was just looking at this on Tuesday at ************** and it was still the cheaper prices. I guess I should have bought it then. Now I am will have to wait until the price goes back down before I buy this.

the price from OCT-JAN was
gateway=$206
portal=$142
total=$348

nows its $150 more!!!!


Good morning Jason, thank you for your e-mail.

The price for the Gateway and 1 Portal was reduced from $498 to $348 in October, however we have adjusted the price back to the regular price of $498 as of February 1st. If you do not want to pay the entire purchase price at once, you could take advantage of our Easy Own plan which allows you to finance the Gateway and 1 Portal for $14/month over 36 months via automatic credit card payments. You can view the prices for all our television equipment at http://shaw.ca/Television/Equipment/. Please let us know if there is anything else we can assist you with, or feel free to contact us through our Live Chat at http://www.shaw.ca/chat.


Thank you and have a great day.

eCare Team

I wrote back


Well that is really dishonest. Shaw never said it was a sale that would end Feb 1st. If Shaw said that then I would have bought it before Feb 1st however Shaw never said it was a sale that would end. So you want me to pay $150 more?



I would prefer you guys to cancel my account I will go to Telus because that is really shady business. Eventhough I would prefer to stay with Shaw because I am very happy I refuse to pay a company that does business this way. I know Shaw doesn't care if I go because you guys have millions of customers but thats fine I know in my heart what is right and wrong.



Next time let your customers know the reduced price of $348 is only for LIMITED TIME and the regular price will be $498 on the following date.





Cancel my account please



Thank You



......I really don't want to leave but its not the end of the world if they let me walk.

I agree with your statements. It also seemed to me to be a permanent price change and not a sale price. There was no information provided about either of the price changes. It certainly dissuades me from purchasing anything.

Dishonest? Prices of almost everything purchased go up and down. If the price of gas has been down for a few months and then goes up, was that dishonest? How about shoes; if the price of the fancy new shoes you were thinking of getting were $250 in several stores, but when you finally decided to buy them you found every place now had them at $350, is that dishonest?

Products go up and down in price due to many factors. There is inflation. Supply and demand. Shortages. Price hikes and reductions by suppliers. Experimentation with the prices to find the sweet spot that maximizes profit (profit per unit as compared to # of units sold).

I'm sorry you didn't get in on it while they were cheaper; but the fact is that there was never any advertising to say "Now at the new, permanent price of...". No one was dishonest with you.

^^^you are comparing electronics with gas and shoes?????

what other electronic product has ever gone up in price(that wasn't a sale)???????????????

if it was a sale then they should have said so like every other major company

@Jason316: hard drives. Major source of HD manufacturing was Thailand, most of that supply got wiped out, now there's HD shortages worldwide, causing HD (and devices containing HDs) to increase in price. Hence, increases in PVR pricing without corresponding increases in HD box pricing.

I expect that the price will go down again in about a year, once the HD supply issue ends. Around that same timeframe, I'd expect them to discontinue the DCX3400 and go gateway-only.

It was not unadvertised.

I heard it was rising, and immediately called in to order, this was on Jan 31st

500gb drives are ~$80 currently. How does that justify a $150 price increase?

Ron.

Just took a quick look around online, and the range of the 500 GB internal hard drives were $90 - $150, with most of them being $100-$120. Looked through BB, FS, LD, Staples, Cbit, Newegg, Tigerdirect.

So prices are up, possibly not up as much as the price increase, but either way you'll have a hard time finding a 500 GB HD for $80.

I expect that the price will go down again in about a year, once the HD supply issue ends.

Good. Right about the time this problem-plagued piece of …um…equipment will be ready for prime time. Then I can pick one up (and, as a bonus, it'll have at least a 1tb drive by then).

So prices are up, possibly not up as much as the price increase, but either way you'll have a hard time finding a 500 GB HD for $80.

I'm sure Arris isn't paying retail prices for hard drives when they are purchasing thousands at a time. Anyway you would need to compare the price difference, not the price today.

Maybe they just need to pay for this:)
I can tell you there will be a Superbowl commercial on the CTV channel, and internal launch was this week Will have to wait for more news next week!

The last hard drive I paid under $80 for was a 1TB, and that was almost a year ago! The 500GB at the time were $50 to $60. So currently they are way up in price.

And bulk discounts don't go very far when there is a shortage. Why should I give you a 30% bulk discount when supply is so scarce that I can sell all my stock at full price?

Yes, over time all electronics go down. That's due to advances in technology, not only the fact that better models come out and compete with the current one, but there are advances in the technology to build the items. In 5 years we'll probably see a much more advanced version of the Gateway at a lower price. But you can't look at it just over a few months, in that time frame prices do go up and down, and that's due to other factors as I already said. The Thailand situation will contribute. Shaw can still be trying to find the sweet spot for the price. There is a lot of competition around Christmas for the consumer dollar and so prices get driven down, but now they may find they don't have to offer that reduction. Along the same vein, during the Christmas season stores like Best Buy might not have agreed to carry it unless the prices were in line with the low prices seen during that season. Arris might have found another customer and can't keep up with demand, so price is adjusted to reduce demand. Shaw installers might not be able to keep up with the demand, so price is adjusted to reduce demand. All speculation, but the point is there are just too many factors that apply in the short term that override the fact that electronics tend to go down in price in the long term.

tux - check out NCIX.. great deals.. huge computer seller across the country. They have a weekend special on a Hitachi external 500gb for $59.99. :)

Ron.

I also don't think Shaw was sneaky or dishonest with the pricing.

They did change the price for 4 months, it wasn't a one week sale or anything to create a bait and switch.

The price was lowered during the holiday season, and it seemed to me all the service providers had a lot of competition going on as well.

Hard drive prices have gone up drasticly. I bet there is some pressure from that put on it as well. Shaw might have been selling at cost and would now be selling at a loss maybe?

(I believe HD prices are artificially high from the manufacturers, gouging so to speak, but that is a seperate issue. Shaw would feel the effect just like i did when I bought a 2 TB drive 2 weeks ago for a new computer.)

If they announced the price change in October, I think the end of January is a fair amount of time to take advanatage of the price. I know I did.

Computer component prices had spikes like this in the past, and will do so again. Ram, HD's, there is always some part that gets hit and the prices go up just before you buy something. After building computers for 10 years, this has happened more than once to me :p

Take a look what these guys are paying for the same system available only as a rental. $28 a month with only one portal. Doesn't sound so bad up here now.

http://www.bendbroadband.com/residential/dc_index.asp?pageID=dc&adct=3

@ Bend you have to rent a wireless modem/router for $10 for Internet (if you want wireless built in) - this cost is included in the rental of the Gateway from them. They actually make use of the modem in the Gateway.

Ron.

@newfbc, Good point about the modem.

To bad there isn' t a forum in Bend to hear the thoughts of the people down there on the Arris system. All in all I'm happy with mine.