A customer wanted to buy a 65” Sharp LCV-TV with an MSRP of $9999, and a fair discount price of $6175. However, they found the item elsewhere advertised for about $4800 + $199 shipping, and asked if we could match the deal. Our buyer checked the latest daily wholesale price with two authorized national Sharp distributors, and found that the dealer cost was $5650 plus shipping from the distributor’s warehouse to the customer. In this instance the distributor subsidized half the actual shipping cost for their dealers, so our cost for shipping was only about $175 after including freight, fuel surcharge, insurance, palletizing, residential delivery charge, etc. Our buyer inquired of the distributor if there were any possible rebates, special incentives, advertising allowances, or discounts that might possibly be (or have recently been) available to permit getting closer to such a price. For example, perhaps a month before there might have been a deal where Sharp offered a free 32” TV with the purchase of the 65”, and if a dealer sold the free 32” TV separately, that might allow them to reduce the 65” price. However, no legitimate explanation was able to be found in this instance.

So our buyer placed our customer’s order directly with the lowest-priced merchant (who was advertising the TV @ $4399) and figured that if the deal was somehow legitimate, then we’d get to keep the $400 difference as profit, and our customer would be happy also.

Now the fun began. A salesman from the merchant calls to confirm the order, and advised that while the unit is brand-new and factory-sealed, that there’s no factory warranty included because they are not a Sharp authorized dealer. He offered to sell us a substitute warranty. Of course, what he didn’t say was that no extended warranty company will repair initially defective goods under warranty – usually there’s a 30 – 90 days waiting period. So if it arrived defective, even if we purchased the questionable non-factory warranty, we might be responsible for potentially $1000’s in repair costs. In addition, without the factory warranty, we were not entitled to any technical support from Sharp. Plus any and all shipping charges to and from repair would also be our responsibility. Further they required a signed and faxed acknowledgement of these terms before they processed the order.

Our buyer figured that since our Company is an authorized Sharp dealer, that the factory warranty would apply as we could extend factory coverage to the customer as their selling dealer, and so he agreed to these terms, also to see what was to come next in this evolving bait & switch scheme.

Then the salesman advised that it would take 4+ weeks to arrive because it would be shipped via a “commercial truck”. Our buyer wondered why if it was shipped within 2-3 days, it would require 4 weeks to arrive since even the most economical ground shipments from San Diego, California to Bangor, Maine take about 7 business days. The salesman replied that this was a special economical service, and that’s how it worked. We said OK but could we at least have the shipment tracking number to confirm shipment within the 2-3 days. The salesman replied that this commercial truck service didn’t provide tracking and that further even the name of the trucking company could not be disclosed at the time of shipment.

OK, got it!