Pentax K-3 Mark III Camera with 18-135mm WR Lens £1344.97 on Amazon

This price is so low I have been tempted. It will not last.

link

Agree a real bargain...but what must SRS and other Pentax main dealers be thinking?

I'd be very unhappy with Pentax if I were in their shoes as it is allowing Amazon to destroy their businesses. Before this decade is out there won't be any independent retailers left.

Hopefully when I said 'it won't last' I was referring to the offer and not the camera.

Back to over £2000 now...Pentax store on Amazon isn't terribly good... I'd rather bricks and mortar store like Grays, Cambrian or SRS

You and me both Peter...even though I couldn't have afforded the extra £704 that SRS are asking over the Amazon deal. That's missing the point though...other people would assume that SRS and other main dealers were overcharging their customers even though it is highly likely that Amazon are selling at below cost price to the Main dealers who cannot possibly compete and therefore over time will lose business and go out of business.

Pentax should be supporting their Main dealers not hastening their demise. The UK government' s Competition and Marketing Agency should be involved looking at Amazon in more detail than they have in the past and their business dealings with their suppliers.

Whenever I've been looking for big money photographic stuff and have looked at Amazon, their prices have been comparable to main dealers. From time to time some prices do drop, usually for a short period or until stock has gone (and always when I'm not wanting to buy), then price goes up again. Whether it's an algorithm designed to shift stuff that isn't moving or a human pricing error, who knows. But I doubt that it's a back and white matter of Amazon deliberately underpricing to drive others out of business. For what it's worth, I've recently bought an Android tablet from the brand's own webshop. I didn't want or need a keyboard but bought one with the tablet because it was a lot cheaper to buy tablet + keyboard than tablet alone. Go figure... Web prices can be very strange!!!

Steve

The whole Amazon strategy appears to be to drive everyone else out of business - they track other retailers prices on many popular items and when a retailer drops a price (for a promotion, stock clearance, or whatever) Amazon will match that price and rely on the fact that most people will take advantage of the "Free" and quick delivery. I make a point of buying from other retailers (particularly if they are independents or small chains) when the prices are similar/same, simply because I don't want to see more and more companies closing down with more jobs being lost.

If their strategy continues to work they will become virtually the only supplier for many items - once that point is reached do you think we will see them dropping prices to very low levels? Or maybe they will take advantage of their monopoly situation and control prices?

Didn't John Lewis once have a 'never knowingly undersold' policy? Surely they weren't trying to drive other companies out of business? Seems to me that if the big A or any other retailer is tracking and responding to other people's prices then it's just applying JL's old policy in the modern context. Or am I missing something?

Steve

John Lewis would not match the price if it was unreasonable (i.e. stock clearance or at a loss) or if the store selling it was more than a certain distance from a JL store, and it was a retrospective policy (they would refund you the difference if you bought it from JL and then found the higher price elsewhere) - Perhaps I'm being a bit more generous to JL than AZ but I felt their policy was more about saying we are the best all-round value on what we sell (the customer service used to be second to none, and their longer free guarantees on many items were/are better than most). I know things have changed a lot for JL, and many other bricks'n'mortar stores, so they no longer offer that price match but I would still prefer to deal with them on many items than talk to the chatbutts on AZ.

At the end of the day they are both businesses trying to establish their positions in the markets, they have to make profit and have to pay tax (even if the tax doesn't get paid in the UK) - but sometimes it's the way things are done that's important too.

* I should declare that I have a vested interest in the continuation of JL - they have enabled us to have may fairly priced holidays at their partnership hotels (including the wonderful Brownsea Castle) over the years. So please feel free to shoot me down

If something is being sold at a loss then there is always a catch, and I learnt from Sarah in Cambrian that margins are very, very slim on cameras to the extent that the prices are the same amongst all the retailers unless Canon/Nikon/Sony/OM/Ricoh have a promotion of some sorts,

For what I pay for Prime now it is starting to look like poor value. Next day delivery isn't usually guaranteed. I only buy stuff if that's the only outlet that I can get stuff from (eg CDs), otherwise I prefer dealing with a human like Sarah or Chris & Co at SRS.

I will just comment that I have recently purchased two items of domsetic equipment, a freezer from Amazon and a washing machine from John Lewis.
Customer service from Amazon was appalling, customer service from John Lewis was excellent.