I came across this very short blog post by Ted Pearlman about price shopping. Here’s my favorite line:
Price shopping is a disease that will lead you to ruin: don’t do it. I’m not talking about seeing if you can find a $1200 designer suit for $200. I’m talking about budgeting $200 for a suit and then going out and buying one that lists for $200 retail.
The point he’s making is don’t purchase a low quality Product A when you can get a high quality Product B. I would often pass this advice along to customers when working as a sales rep at COPYCATS Media. Customers would have a limited budget and want a CD replication project done with full packaging. Sometimes they would ask us price-match a quote from another company that was absurdly low. We gladly try to match competitors’ prices, but we also have to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples.
Getting something for a below market value is often for a reason (remember the epidsode of Seinfeld with the red dot on the cashmere sweater?). The first thing you want to evaluate is the quality of the product. You can always request samples from COPYCATS Media, and most other places will fulfill that request, too. If you come across a place that doesn’t give you a sample, then you already have a pretty big red flag (or red dot).
When looking at samples, here’s what you need to evaluate: (more…)
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