I have to know

[Silver14SS]

Or if they accepted $20 from the winner in a private transaction, who would know?

 

[kapnkush608]

Dang, it was just a raffle. Do you got an issue with Powerball? What about when a frag swap raffles off donated items at a profit? What's so bad about throwing $20 at a chance to win something you want? Was it your money they spent? Are you salty you bought tickets and didnt win? I really don't see what the issue is.

 

[Silver14SS]

I don't have an issue with any of it. Just seems like there are ways to accomplish the same thing without having the possible negative reaction.

Some people may interpret it as trying to profit over the MSRP. Perhaps OP is one of those people.

 

[Demonic]

Dang, it was just a raffle. Do you got an issue with Powerball? What about when a frag swap raffles off donated items at a profit? What's so bad about throwing $20 at a chance to win something you want? Was it your money they spent? Are you salty you bought tickets and didnt win? I really don't see what the issue is.

If you read the thread, you would find your answers, no I didn’t purchase a ticket.

 

[Conor_K]

I find this whole MAP debate interesting.

In my business MAP pricing is only issued to distributors, which I am one of.
You can be darn sure I try to get more than MAP at every oppurtunity.

When demand is high and inventory is low (which just so happens to be the case in a big way in my market right now) I make a lot more money.

This makes up for when the market swings the other way, investment charges on inventory, and all sorts of overhead consumers don’t know about or think of.


I would suggest that we are very lucky that neptune chooses to publish thier MAP.

As a distributor, I would not be happy with that practice at all! I would be furious with with it.
If I am better distributor then my competiton, (offer better service, tech support, fast shipping etc...) I want to be paid more than said competitior.
Releasing MAP to the public basically handcuffs me to a specific margin and probably one I don’t love.

As a consumer it gives us the power to buy at that price if we want to. Or pay more if it’s worth it to us.

Distributor margins are low. I’ll never blame an honest one for squeezing margin out of any crevice they can.

Be happy you know the base price. If this were a lot of other industries, you’d all be paying a lot more for quite some time until demand went down and inventory went up.

My 2 pennies...no markup.

 

[Softhammer]

Here’s an idea people, don’t buy the crap. The hobby existed for decades before this junk. YOU DONT NEED IT.

 

[TopShelfAquatics]

This thread has gotten a bit out of hand so I wanted to further elaborate on the situation.
We received 2 Tridents. One was sold at MAP to a local customer who had been the first to ask for it. After an innumerable amount of requests for the second one and no real way to decide who got it, the raffle was thought up. Since then, we have received 30+ requests from people who would like us to run another one.
I understand that raffles are not for everyone, nor something that everyone supports, but they occur almost daily and this is one of the first times I see such an overwhelmingly negative response. I could understand if we received payments and did a sketchy drawing for the winner, or if we never shipped out an item, but every single participant was content with their chance at winning.
We really would like to apologize for the upset that this has caused as it was certainly not our intent. I think a lot of the frustration evident on this thread also has to do with the limitations in availability for the product and the amount of time many have been waiting for it. We were excited, we wanted to do something cool, clearly we jumped the shark in this situation but to say that we were selling to the highest bidder is incorrect. Hindsight is indeed 20:20 and if anyone on our team thought there would be this much negativity from a completely transparent raffle we would not have done one. We will just take this as an opportunity to grow and learn and genuinely do appreciate all the insight and opinions provided by this thread. There certainly are points made which we, in the moment, did not fully consider. It’s unfortunate that it might have put people off from adding some TSA pieces to their collection but I’m sure with time some people will recognize that everyone makes a mistake or two.
Happy Reefing everyone.

 

[Silver14SS]

If anyone truly wrote you off for the way they felt about the raffle, hopefully your response wins them back

 

[mta_morrow]

I understand how this may look, but lets be fair. MAP pricing only sets the minimum price, it doesn't set the max. If someone wants to pay X amount of dollars for an item then its their right to spend their money. I have no problems or ill feelings towards any of you all, but what @TopShelfAquatics did isn't wrong. It is their right as a business trying to make money in a field that really isn't that profitable to do what they want. People can always wait for more to come into production and buy it at MAP pricing, if they r in to much of a rush to buy it at any cost then that's on them. I am sure this will not be a favorable post, but that is my 2 cents.

I like your post and I agree with it. Thank goodness this wasn’t a “tickle me Elmo” or it could have gotten real ugly!

 

[Demonic]

If anyone truly wrote you off for the way they felt about the raffle, hopefully your response wins them back

It sure put a smile on my face. Time will tell, but its def on the right track.

Thanks for the post TSA, it really was appreciated. Exploitation really hits a soft spot with me, not sure why.

 

[Billldg]

This thread has gotten a bit out of hand so I wanted to further elaborate on the situation.
We received 2 Tridents. One was sold at MAP to a local customer who had been the first to ask for it. After an innumerable amount of requests for the second one and no real way to decide who got it, the raffle was thought up. Since then, we have received 30+ requests from people who would like us to run another one.
I understand that raffles are not for everyone, nor something that everyone supports, but they occur almost daily and this is one of the first times I see such an overwhelmingly negative response. I could understand if we received payments and did a sketchy drawing for the winner, or if we never shipped out an item, but every single participant was content with their chance at winning.
We really would like to apologize for the upset that this has caused as it was certainly not our intent. I think a lot of the frustration evident on this thread also has to do with the limitations in availability for the product and the amount of time many have been waiting for it. We were excited, we wanted to do something cool, clearly we jumped the shark in this situation but to say that we were selling to the highest bidder is incorrect. Hindsight is indeed 20:20 and if anyone on our team thought there would be this much negativity from a completely transparent raffle we would not have done one. We will just take this as an opportunity to grow and learn and genuinely do appreciate all the insight and opinions provided by this thread. There certainly are points made which we, in the moment, did not fully consider. It’s unfortunate that it might have put people off from adding some TSA pieces to their collection but I’m sure with time some people will recognize that everyone makes a mistake or two.
Happy Reefing everyone.

Like I said in my previous post, I didnt feel like you did anything wrong and look forward to meeting you guys in Atlanta in a week, bring a TSA Hunch Punch, lol!!!

 

[MnFish1]

Def not a crime, just not something I wouldn’t expect from a company. Especially one this well known.

Question still stands, would anyone be upset if BRS sold these for the same cost as this one? By all legality jargon, nothing stating they can’t, they choose not too because they are trying to keep their customers happy.

My opinion of course

Upset - no. Why? For some reason there is this Frenzy to get something 'today' that we havent ever 'needed' before. When I eventually get one - it will be after watching everyone else successes - and failures (hopefully not many of those). IMHO - it would be ok for companies to 'raise the price' if there was strong demand - but thats certainly not a common practice. Here is a question an ethical one - lets say I know the head of BRS - and said - Hey - I will give you $1000 for a trident when they come out. Would that be 'bad'. What if he was a friend of mine and he said - Ill snag you one (at the usual price) - would that be bad? Im only using BRS because that was the company you picked - but it could be any of them.

I appreciate the 'apology' from the company - though I dont think it personally was necessary.

 

[Opus]

Personally I don't like the method and I won't participate but it wouldn't keep me from supporting a retailer. I do think this has become a recent trend to get more money from the consumer because they feel like they are spending less. I'm really seeing it a lot locally in the local reefing facebook pages. I'm seeing a lot of people getting 3 to 4 times what they would normally get for a coral by raffling off a coral instead of just outright selling it. One group admin finally banned auctions because it was getting so out of hand.