[TenTec] Orion Pricing (long)

[al_lorona@agilent.com]

Hi, Everybody, good discussion.

I believe that you get what you pay for. One of my peeves is making any
decision based *solely* on price.

I have friends who drive five miles out of their way to shop at Costco where
they stand in the checkout line for twenty or thirty minutes just because,
you know, the pickles are $2.00 a jar cheaper than at the local supermarket.

My brother-in-law spent three weeks researching digital cameras, and when he
decided on a model, visited every store you can imagine and then insisted on
buying it on the Internet because it was ten dollars cheaper there.
(Problems ensued which were made worse by not having the live person
connection and he ended up sending it back.)

This is how most folks shop for everything from auto insurance to hotel
rooms to pianos.

I myself have been burned frequently enough (it took me twice to really
learn my lesson) by the price obsession that my rule now is actually Don't
Go With The Lowest Bidder.

Call me crazy, but even when all other things are equal, I may still decide
not to go with the lowest bid. I did this recently when the guy at the local
camera store had somewhat higher prices but I wanted to give him my business
in appreciation for giving me excellent attention before the sale. I do this
because I want to reward the behavior that I want to see in sales people and
punish the behavior that I don't like. You can tell that I have a
three-year-old at home, can't you?

It's natural to speculate and want lots of options on a radio that's not
even out yet, but when I hear that 'the Japanese can make it cheaper', my
response to that is, "So what?" Honestly, to me that is like looking at a
menu and saying, "I really want a pastrami on rye, but the peanut butter and
jelly is 50 cents cheaper at a place fifteen miles from here. I think I'll
have a PB&J."

To use a ham radio example, I have had lousy experiences at Ham Radio
Outlet, which I have documented on newsgroups and so forth and don't need to
get into in this forum, and I have also had less than stellar service from
the Japanese rig manufacturers. And so even though they may have a better
price I do not buy from them. Besides, it's just a different kind of rig
coming out of Japan. Yet, I have had nothing but service that can only be
described as amazing from Ten Tec. So guess what my next purchase will
likely be?

It's hard for me to come to terms with the prices of rigs these days, but
isn't the typical high end model from KenSuCom upwards of $3,000 nowadays?
Wasn't there an ICOM several years ago with a CRT and MIL spec and all that
for close to $5K? This is all made more complicated when we equate bells &
whistles to basic performance, which has the effect of making a rig that has
lots of transmit audio DSP settings but clips the first dit in CW mode look
much better than one without that feature but which transmits perfect CW and
whose receiver can operate on FD in close proximity to other transmitters.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is that when I hear figures being tossed
around it seems to me they are in the ballpark, no? 

Regards,

Al W6LX





> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Rippey [mailto:w3uls@3n.net] 
> Sent: Friday, 25 January 2002 10:14 AM
> To: tentec@contesting.com
> Subject: [TenTec] Orion Pricing
> 
> 
> The problem Ten-Tec has with its pricing is that the high 
> dollar valuation 
> vs. the yen means that YaeComWood can copy and then undersell any 
> American-made product, no matter how worthy. The only 
> solution is for the 
> yen to increase in value, but the Japanese government is 
> doing everything 
> it can to keep that from happening. So you have to be a loyal 
> American and 
> root for Ten-Tec, the underdog, in this fight, which is not a 
> fair one.
> 
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