Why iPods are never on sale

There was a Sale of the iPod Video 30 GB at Media Markt (thats like Best Buy in Germany). It was 20 Euro (thats 26 Dollars, according to Google) of the Price at the Apple Store.

Now if I only knew why my object of desire costs 379 Euros (which converts to 265 US Dollars) in the German Apple shop but only 349 US Dollars in the U.S.? And why I can't order it from the U.S. only because I live in Europe? It's a shame how we get ripped off here.

I worked in Toys r us they had ex-display ipods perfect condition never touched except to be put out on display in a glass case... Was the latest video model got it for £100... that was about £120 off from toys r us

Newegg(.com) has always had them slightly cheaper, they tend to be $10-20 off, for example on the 80GB ipod:

$329.99
You Save: $10.00

No great, but better then nothing. Maybe apple will get a nice pricefixing lawsuit like aTi and AMD...

#20 is right. I work for Radio Shack, and we can't sell iPods for a penny under their advertised price, even employee discounts are a not allowed. For Black Friday we were offering products, such as Bluetooth headsets, and LCD TV's for well under our cost, about $50 on the TV and $30 on the bluetooth, and that $30 is alot considering we pay $40 for it. It was to get people in the store, when they came in, and were sold out, which we were by 7 am, we moved customers to our regular priced TV's and other items. One problem with iPod being so tight and not allowing us to lower our price, as a manager, I push other products than the iPod. I pushed the Sansa E250 as the better deal, it was on sale for $119, and at that price, I still made more on it than and iPod. We also have Sansa accessories, such as cases. Plus most of our ipod speakers, have audio inputs, so any MP3 player will work, and the home and car chargers are nothing but usb wall chargers, so you can charge and usb device in it, including a Sansa or Zune, or whatever. Did we sell more Sansa's than iPods? No, but did we outsell them 7 to 1?(like their market share) No more like 2 to 1. Will customers be happy with the Sansa, probably. We have been open for almost 2 hours today, and have already recieved 2 calls on how to install iTunes, Sansa you only need Windows Media Player, everyone already has that. On windows of course.

IIRC, back in 1997 when Steve returned to Apple, he almost immediately stopped the practice of allowing resellers to continually undercut one another. The MAP that 'dissuaded' resellers from discounting was issued in late 1997 (early 1998?)before the iMac was released. With the release of the iMac, production costs became closely tied to the MSRP and the 'good' margins disappeared. It's remained that way ever since and now with Apple stores, will never probably change back.

Bill

wouldn't you think that apple is in a bit better position to undercut best buy/circuit city than the other way around? are we talking about ipods here? apple ipods, right?

I got my last gen nano with a $61 rebate from FYE

I happened to notice this same deal on Amazon the other day, but an interesting thing about it is that it's wrong. The price of the same iPod on Apple's site is $349.00 not $349.99. So Amazon's price is one dollar over the manufacturer's price, and then marked down to the same price as Apple's site.

That's not really much of a sale now is it?

resellers are actually contractually obligated to price them at apple's list price. pricing otuside apple's price (up or down) will result in some kind of penalty to the reseller