AC Supply - No more discount?

[trag]

Thank you for this thread. I was recently shocked to see ACSupply showing MSRP for Estes products. I've been ordering from them for years. Apparently, I've never created an account, though, as I never received the email about codes and such.

 

[Scott_650]

Thank you for this thread. I was recently shocked to see ACSupply showing MSRP for Estes products. I've been ordering from them for years. Apparently, I've never created an account, though, as I never received the email about codes and such.

If you didn’t catch it earlier in the thread, ACS still discounts most of their Estes items, you simply have to add it to your cart to see the discounted price - no codes needed.

 

[Orestes Mayo]

Was shopping for some Estes kits, did my usual of researching them on the Estes site, then go to AC Supplies to actually order.

With a few individual exceptions, all Estes kits and motors are shown at list price. Wondering if this is a lingering issue from the April Fools joke (except it wasn't a joke....) where Estes requires list price advertising, I placed a few items in my Cart. They are still shown at full retail. I didn't want to risk going through the checkout procedure to see if a discount magically appears, as I might accidentally end up with an order at a price I don't want.

Anyone buy from them in the last few days?

Hans.

Edit: I see that Quest products are shown as discounted. Maybe AC is pivoting away from Estes toward Quest? Would seem odd, though, as Estes is the 800# gorilla.

I went in today and did see the cart discounted but its now 20%, no longer 30% it would appear. But you do have to be logged in to see the discounts.

 

[SolarYellow]

Yeah. In the last year and a half, AC has gone from 40-off to 30-off to 20-off on Estes, while also becoming pretty much the best place to buy Quest motors and kits.

 

[troj]

I went in today and did see the cart discounted but its now 20%, no longer 30% it would appear. But you do have to be logged in to see the discounts.

That's a pretty standard MAP policy.

MAP policies vary in so many ways, but for the vast majority, it's literally a Minimum Advertised Price. It doesn't govern what you sell it for, just what you advertise it for. What this means is that "once you know who the customer is," you can show them the actual price. You just have to comply with MAP in advertising, which includes an anonymous user hitting your site and shopping crawlers.

I could go on for literal pages about MAP, how it works, etc - I deal with it at work. There are nuances and highly varied rules, but the basic of almost all of them is the exact behavior you're seeing.

-Kevin

 

[neil_w]

If it was cheaper to do the whole process here in the USA then Estes would do it.

Repeated for emphasis.

It is one thing to debate Estes's strategy regarding retail vs. mail order, hobbyist vs. casual buyer, etc. But it is quite another to imagine that Estes doesn't understand their own supply chain.

 

[Orestes Mayo]

Repeated for emphasis.

It is one thing to debate Estes's strategy regarding retail vs. mail order, hobbyist vs. casual buyer, etc. But it is quite another to imagine that Estes doesn't understand their own supply chain.

I may agree with this for the most part but large corporations can lose their own mission. Look at Sears, the Amazon of the 19th and 20th century.

 

[neil_w]

I may agree with this for the most part but large corporations can lose their own mission. Look at Sears, the Amazon of the 19th and 20th century.

No argument.

 

[SolarYellow]

I may agree with this for the most part but large corporations can lose their own mission. Look at Sears, the Amazon of the 19th and 20th century.

Sears slit its wrist between 1994 and 1996.

When I bought a car that needed work and went to Sears to buy tools to work on it in 1996, the Craftsman tools were objectively crappier than the Craftsman tools I'd bought at Sears in 1994. It's been a downhill slide ever since.