brad wrote:I simply don't understand how they can do it for that sort of price!
House alarms cost about $30 a month for monitoring but only cost some companies about $4 a month to actually monitor and I know this because I gave the owner to a security company a jump and he offered me a home security system for $4 a month but there was a catch because he wanted me to sell and install them for him..
Some shippers on Ebay get free shipping and it costs me about $8.45 to return bad items via United Parcel Service for the first pound and all packages are rounded up to the highest pound. At work we get a discount shipping through UPS.
I imagine they are getting volume discounts or items at cost. They might have partnerships with companies or know someone or maybe they just make very good friends to get things really cheap. If I order parts from Digikey or Mouser, the price goes down if I buy in bulk and it is cheaper if I buy a thousand or tens of thousands than having a worker count and clip my parts from a reel.
If you had international help, you could have things assembled in another country and shipped at a lower cost than shipping them from your home town.
And there are people who only buy items when they are on sale at the grocery store so if it isn't on sale, it is less likely to be bought so that is how we save money.
Sometimes salesmen can give you their price but usually everyone's price is the same because it is a game unless they wish to push a product and some companies are so large that they can negotiate their own price because sellers want to do business with them and unfortunately it is an unfair marketplace. I do notice that some of the Kickstarters have people going directly to China to get things made and they can probably afford the airfare because it allows them to buy products directly at cost and cut out the middle man so some of these people are businessmen who may routinely do business in other countries and know how to get things cheap.