SpringHill & Breck's are horticulture companies selling bulbs, trees, plants, etc... When our corporate office sold all of our companies to another company I don't know how it got split up later, but for 25 years all of these companies had been owned by one parent company.

Anyway, the reason they had to call back was, as I said, we were paid to not only take orders but to keep track of total calls in relation to orders, catalog requests, customer service inquiries, product inquiries, etc... (a main computer did this & we sent the pertinent info to the various sister companies under our parentage)

Not necessarily. Some people save up for this sale expecting to purchase title-x at a certain price point. If it's a $6 title, they are expecting to get it for $4.80. If you are intending to purchase 50 DVDs it adds up to $60 which is enough savings for an additional 13 titles at that price *or* a reduction of the number of titles expected if your budget in based on the discount and that's all you have available to spend. As far as I'm concerned, $60 is $60 no matter what your income level. If I'm expecting the price to be less and it is not then I'll complain and/or just not make the purchase.

That said, I must have somewhat different tastes because my Wishlist total went down a bit after the sale started. Some was caused by CDs and some by DVDs. Nothing went up. I put my order in my cart a week before the sale started and it dropped by ~$4 with no title going up in price.

That's quite a blanket statement to make, but I'm not sure it's accurate for everyone, everytime. It really depends on what you are after any given moment. As you mention, the Criterion titles tend to be less at DVD Planet. However, only about 1/4 of the titles in my wishlist are currently less expensive at DVD Planet than at DD with some obscenely more expensive at DVD Planet, so in my case your conjecture that "MOST titles at DVD-Planet cost MUCH LESS" is in no way an accurate statement as for me, most titles at DD cost much less. However, it *does* pay to compare as while my overall wishlist refutes your statement my orders this time do not as I ordered double the titles from DVD Planet as from DD based on prices at the two sites.

I liked this idea but wasn't sure you were going to follow-up. Used your same ranges for comparison purposes.
As of Today (06-06-2008): DVD Price Search

Search Results: $5.00 - $6.00 at Deep Discount (1138 Matches)
Search Results: $6.00 - $7.00 at Deep Discount (2164 Matches)
Search Results: $7.00 - $8.00 at Deep Discount (2170 Matches)
Search Results: $8.00 - $9.00 at Deep Discount (1702 Matches)
Search Results: $9.00 - $10.00 at Deep Discount (4051 Matches)
Search Results: $10.00 - $15.00 at Deep Discount (10893 Matches)

and just for the heck of it:
$15.01 - $10,000 at Deep Discount (12,836 matches)

Doesn't look like there's any evidence of consistent price jumps, at least at the lower levels.

For accounting purposes and future financial liabilities which get out of control, this can be a good thing. Two stores which virtually have the same stock source. If one store goes out of business, the other one retains the same stock.

Yep.

No wonder it's gotten quiet in this thread from the conspiracy theorists.

happy to say that nothing on my wishlist of 128 titles went up in price.

im glad to see they seem to have stopped the deceptive practice of their most recent 20% off sales. everyone knowing about it and looking for it made it harder for them, good job.

^^^I think that's the more logical reason. I saw a lot of titles go up on my wishlist last year and this year none that I can see.

It's quiet because DD isn't scamming their customers like they did during the last three "sales".

Kudos to DD for running an honest 20% off sale.

They chose to scam Canadians instead by applying asinine shipping charges.

Yes, it's quite a "scam" to list a high shipping price along with the order and then charge that price. Get your lawyer on the phone! Stat!

I think eXcentris was probably joking (the smiley indicates humor, but I'm not sure how the smiley was intended--it could be taken MANY ways in this situation), but people do throw the word "scam" around WAY too much on the DVDTalk forums. Sure, it has some valid uses, but if you use the word, it's easy to get mixed in with the crowd of people that have overinflated senses of entitlement--you know, the ones who think that companies should have to sell them products at prices that they want to pay, and the ones who want companies to honor website glitches or they'll "never order from them again."

But back to the point. I really love the logic of:
I think they do something.
I'm going to prove it.
...
I can't prove it.
Well, they did it before.

And the logic of:
"Everyone" knowing about it and looking for it made it harder for them.

Uh-huh. "Everyone." I think there're about 20 people that believe in the consipracy. And I'm sure DD fears them. And is in a panic over potential lost sales from them.


My wantlist has over 100 items on it. Ever since the end of a special sale over a month ago, the grand total (about $1885) has not changed more than $5 in either direction, and I look at it at least once every 3 days or so, just to see if something has suddenly dropped into a price range where I want to buy it. And here's a thanks to DD for lowering the price of Invader Zim the day the sale went into effect. It was in my cart at Amazon, but the price dropped at DD by $2, and then after the 20% off, it beat the Amazon price by a little bit, so I got it from DD, instead.

I'm SURE that, because of the conspiracy theorists, DD has abandoned their traditional "scam" of raising (some?) prices right before the sale. They KNEW they'd be caught, and they were afraid to wind up in jail, so they played it safe (THIS TIME). But now they know: "everone" is watching.[/sarcasm]


Of course, if you HAD proven something, I'd be eating my hat now.

I never believed for a second that DD was conspiring to advertise a 20%-off sale and then raise prices to cut the savings right before it. I accept the fact that it will happen with some items. But a mass conspiracy seemed (sorry guys) ridiculous. I have ordered from them for a few years during every sale, and in the first one I was disappointed because the Star Blazers movie box set was removed frm the site at the beginning of the sale (and then came back again afterwards). But I just figured they didn't want to sell it to me at 20% off. That's their perogative. (Actually, I'm glad I didn't spend the money, as I subsequently read reviews that said the box set has very poor transfers of the movies. I'll wait for somebody to release better versions someday.)


So as I see it, here are your options:

1) (Current system) "Sitewide 20%-off sale."
You can see the price and mentally deduct 20% to decide if you want the item.
Before the sale DD will raise the prices on a few items because of their obligations to distributors or for whatever other business reasons they use to justify doing so.
This would disappoint or anger only those of you that memorized (or otherwise recorded) the prices beforehand, and can't just make a decision on the spot of "I want (or don't want) this item at this price."

2) "Thousands of items are 20% off."
You can see the prices with some items marked as excluded from the sale. This would disappoint some people (and anger those aforementioned entitlement-people) to see their most-desired items excluded from the sale. This would also be worse for business for DD, as it's much better to advertise a "sitewide" sale (and I like the idea of them attracting more business, as it makes for lower prices for me, a consumer). The probability of disappointing/angering someone here is much higher than in (1) above, since only a subgroup of people would truly know what the price was before the "sitewide sale," but in THIS case everybody could see the exclusions.

3) (Old practice) DD removes some items from their inventory before the sale and puts them back afterwards.
This would be bad practice for them as they would lose sales of those items during the sale, customers would purchase them elsewhere thinking they were no longer available from DD, and DD would be jammed up with people contacting them to find out what happened to this item or that item. And then the items would return after the sale, pissing people off. In my opinion, worst solution.


If you have more ideas, I'd love to hear them. To me, it looks like #1 is the best choice all around.

Personally, I like the fact that DD is still in business. I don't want them to have to take a loss on some items to satisfy a few hardcore DVD-purchasers who are ready to pounce on them and yell "scam" or "fraud." (I'm not saying everybody here is doing that.) And then because of that loss raise prices on something else (especially if it's something I want to buy). I prefer the option of simply shopping, seeing a price, and deciding if it's worth it to me (while comparing to availability and prices elsewhere).


Last note from me (at least in this post):
In this sale, I ordered 16 items: 12 from DD, 4 from DVDPlanet. Only 4 of them were cheaper at DVDPlanet, and the savings on the 4 items came to just over $1 total. I also looked up about 30 other titles on DVDPlanet, and ALL of them were cheaper at DD (by probably 10% on average). Sorry, uptonight, but your assertion about "MOST" items being "MUCH CHEAPER" at DVDPlanet is ludicrous. How about "MOST" items on YOUR WISHLIST, which seems to be rather unique.

It's fairly easy to see examples of which items are cheaper on which site: look at the top sellers lists.

Everyone should keep in mind also that the USPS raised their prices in May so their shipping costs have gone up.

My philosiphy is if they are at my target price, I buy if not I dont. That way I dont worry about price increases prior to the sale.

Yeah joking. This isn't a scam, just a bad business decision. So I'll let you guys get back on topic.

Bad business decision? How do you know? Maybe it's not profitable to ship to Canada anymore?

Anyone who doesn't believe that DD raised the prices drastically before the last three sales need only to search the 20% off "sale" thread from last November and compare those prices with the prices of this current sale. Facts don't lie. Also compare the frequency of customers complaining about those previous three "sales" against the infrequency of complaints during the current sale. Again, facts don't lie.

No amount of proof of deception would ever satisfy the hardcore DD apologists who prefer to bury their heads in the sand.

Although I won't be buying much during this current sale, I'm happy that DD didn't pull any shenanigans this go around.

As far as Canadian shipping, the USPS recently raised the shipping rates to Canada significantly.

And the way to address that is to make sure that no one, in your 2nd largest group of customers, will ever put an order in? Well that's just brilliant. Especially now, with the CDN $ at par, when you would have expected an even larger number of Canadians ordering. Surely, a number of aternative solutions, including some shipping increases (heck they could have doubled that flat rate of $5.95 per order and still have Canadians putting in large orders), could have been implemented where they would have made some profit without alienating a whole bunch of customers. As it stands this is a lose/lose situation for DD. Americans still get free shipping (which is fine by me), but if they expected Canadians to subsidize said free shipping by hiking "international" rates to ridiculous levels (as far as Canada is concerned), than it backfired big time.

I realize that but see above. Surely it doesn't cost as much to ship to Canada as it does to the UK, India, or Japan. This is where these new "international" shipping rates become silly, especially since Canadians are your 2nd largest group of customers during these semi-annual sales.

Shipping does seem rather fucked up. You buy only maybe 4 box sets totalling $300+ and you're paying 33% MORE for shipping to Canada? Didn't know my friends in Canada were being fucked over like this.

$50.01 - $100.00: $12.95
$150.01 to $200.00: $23.95
$250.01 to $300.00: $37.95
More than $300.00: $99.95

Planet Earth HD went significantly up in price. Oh well, the things that were in my wishlist didn't and I only ended up getting Blast of Silence and Mantis in Lace because of how they dealt with shipping (which took an email to have it based on the item cost after discount, and they seemed a bit antsy about it)

Also, DD packages invariably get stopped by customs which means an extra $5 brokerage charge + GST/PST on each package. We'd pay GST/PST on local purchases anyway, but by making large orders, you could spread that $5 and the $5.95 flat shipping rate over maybe 10-12 DVD's and still make the purchase worthwile. But those new shipping rates now negate that.

So can I have my orders shipped to your house?

The complaints weren't limited to this board only either. There are many shopping & deals forums where folks talked about the increases the last few sales.

Well, for #3 (old practices) DD did remove some product in year's past as those studios did not want (objected to) participation in the sale at that time. I remember discussions about that. So DD has not choice there.

As for price increases, I do not care whether they go up or down. Just like others have mentioned here, I look at the prices and compare them to other sites, like Amazon, Barnes and Noble (there B2G1 sale), BM's, etc. and see who has the best prices in the range I want to pay. Then I decide to buy or not. I keep a spreadsheet so all I do is plug in the prices and it shows me which is cheapest, % off, etc and I look and decide.

Very simple approach and to me if a company, say like BN's computer decides to raise the price because of increased interest, that is fine. I will just wait to buy it later or get it somewhere else.

No titles on my wish list went up on this sale, and the only ones that went up on previous sales were ones that were just coming off some other sale or special deal.

I have never had any problems with them and there are quite a few repeat buyers in the 20% thread. I'm not doubting you had a bad experience, but I've ordered way too much from them over the past few years and have received everything.