Last week a letter came in the mail at work and has been making it’s way around the store. It’s a typical scam letter where someone has died and you can now inherit 77.7M dollars. I’ve scanned it for your enjoyment. It’s quite a good read.
The funny thing is that some people are gullible enough to actually fall for something like this. I found it quite surprising that it actually came through the mail. Usually you just see something like this come through into the junk folder in your email, and you don’t even give a look at it.
You would think by now that there would be legislation against this type of activity, but the police don’t seem to want anything to do with it. It’s one thing if it comes through as an email, but coming as a letter, you are sure to scam more people than usual.
Dear Canadian Retailers,
I just wanted to write you a quick note to let you know that I’m going to try my best from now on to avoid purchasing items from you. This is specifically due to your inability to properly recognize that the exchange rates between the Canadian and American dollar are almost equivalent, and that your prices should be adjusted accordingly.
To support my point I would like to identify a few examples. Yesterday I walked into Chapters to buy a new book. After looking at the price on the back of the book, I promptly walked out of the store. The price was $24.99CAD and $10.99USD. This clearly is not the exchange rate. Recently I was doing research for a client on a Nikon D200 model camera. The price of the camera is $1099USD, and in Canada, is sold for over $2000CAD. As a result, my client has opted to buy it from the US, and have it shipped here. It is still cheaper, even with having to pay duty.
As far as the book goes, I decided to order it online from Amazon. I ended up paying $22.93CAD total, including shipping and taxes. This saved me over 15%. Now answer me this, why would I pay this extra 15% when it is clearly just an extra 15% markup on the price? You are taking advantage of your customers, and before long, they will start to catch on. Once upon a time this was an acceptable price because of the exchange rates, but let’s face it, the times have changed. The Canadian economy is stronger than ever, and your pricing structures should be altered accordingly.
I purchase and resell electronics from my suppliers for my clients upon their request. We make a very good profit margin on our sales, and we still beat prices by over 100% in some cases compared to retail giants like BestBuy and FutureShop. These stores can make over 400% in markup on some of their sales. The prices in the United States are still high, but they are much more reasonable.
For the time being I’m going to order the majority of my goods online from wholesalers.
Sincerly,
Dave Lahn
