[sclug] USB cable prices

[Alex Butcher]

On Fri, 20 May 2005, Simon Champion wrote:

> I've been shopping for USB cables, and I've noticed some massive price
> differences for what look like the same product.  Cables in the high street
> shops seem to retail at about ?10 - ?15, but if you look online there are ads
> for them as low as 70 pence.
>
> I'm not normally the suspicious type, but those prices are so wildly
> different, it's hard not to notice. But I can't work out why. Can anyone
> tell me what I should be looking out for here.

Cables are cheap to make, but people tend to need them at short notice, so
many vendors feel the market will bear a higher price for the 'convenience
factor' or being able to drop into a shop and pick up the cable you need. In
some cases (e.g. Richer Sounds), I imagine they make most of their profit
(and certainly their best margins) from their cable sales.

I'd skip on the absolute cheapest, but 2-3GBP for a 1.5m USB cable seems
fair. 10-15 seems extortionate, unless you need it NOW to get some expensive
piece of hardware working.

> Thanks.
>   Confused, of Maidenhead.

Best Regards,
Alex.
-- 
Alex Butcher      Brainbench MVP for Internet Security: www.brainbench.com
Bristol, UK                      Need reliable and secure network systems?
PGP/GnuPG ID:0x271fd950                         <http://www.assursys.com/>