Roland VR-09: Pricing all over the place!

[thozzman]

Has anybody noticed what's going on with the VR-09's street price lately? Sweetwater, Kraft, and Sam Ash took a price increase to 999, while Guitar Center stayed at 899. Its sister company, Musicians Friend, went DOWN to 799. And it's not the only one to drop. American Musical Supply, Zzounds, and Music123 all reduced the price to 799!

Any thoughts as to what's going on?

 

[SeaGtGruff]

No idea, but I did notice all three of those prices when I searched earlier tonight. I wonder if Roland told the stores they were going to change the price by $100 but the stores got confused about whether it was going up or down? Maybe you should buy it at $799 before it goes up to $999?

 

[thozzman]

Good question. This is the first time I've seen such inconsistencies in pricing on a new item. I emailed Sweetwater to find out what their Impression is. I'm sure they would meet any competitor's price.

 

[SeaGtGruff]

Sometimes a store will put an item on sale for a short time-- but usually when they do that they will clearly indicate that the price is temporarily discounted for the sale, because they want to nudge people who have been sitting on the fence to jump on the deal before the sale ends. In this case, I don't see any notices about the price being reduced for a sale.

And from what I've seen, Sweetwater usually has the same everyday prices as other stores, so if the reduced price isn't related to a sale then it's odd that Sweetwater's price wasn't reduced as well. I'd be curious to hear what you hear from them!

 

[thozzman]

Well, I contacted Sweetwater and gave the same information to my sales engineer about the VR-09's pricing variations. He wasn't sure what was going on. He could only speculate that perhaps Sweetwater is still taking orders from Roland while the others may be looking to deplete their existing inventory and not taking any new deliveries. I then asked him if he would meet the 799 price point if I wanted to buy. I'll be in Fort Wayne next week. He said to contact him when I'm in the store and "we'll see what we can work out."