3:07
Suspiciously cheap gear is not a bargain
On YouTube this video is called Buy Cheep Pioneer kit/ DJ Gear !!!NOT!!!
What this lesson teaches
Prompted by somebody emailing him a set of links to suspiciously cheap equipment, and the reasoning is simple and sound.
The rule
If it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
The arithmetic that shows why
And this is the useful part, because it gives you a test rather than a feeling.
Take a particular CD player. In one shop it is 1000. In a shop in the next town, 1010. A few miles further on, 980.
That spread is normal and explicable: different shops run different margins, and one of them may have a sale on.
So when you see that same item advertised at 250, you are not looking at a keener margin. You are looking at a number that cannot be produced by any legitimate business selling that product.
The practical version: check three or four real prices first. They will cluster. Anything far outside the cluster is not a bargain, it is a different kind of transaction - and his assessment is blunt: you will probably receive nothing at all, because they are con artists.
What a real dealer sells you
The second half, and it is the argument for paying the real price even when a cheaper source looks plausible.
Peace of mind.
Somebody to talk to. A person you can ask questions, before and after buying.
A guarantee - and this is the one that matters. If the thing goes wrong, there is somebody to send it back to.
Whereas buy from the other sort of seller and, even if the item arrives, they do not care. They have your money. When it fails - and his view is that it probably will - you are taking it somewhere else and paying an arm and a leg to have it fixed.
Why that is worth real money
Because of what the rest of this curriculum says about this trade. Equipment fails - the backup lessons in this stage are built around it - and it fails at gigs, on Saturday nights, when you are 200 miles from home.
A warranty is not an abstraction in that situation. It is the difference between a fortnight's inconvenience and the loss of a player you cannot replace before next weekend.
And one extension
Worth adding for the modern version of the same problem. The scam he is describing - a fake shop with impossible prices - still exists, and so does a subtler relative: genuine-looking listings for grey-market or counterfeit equipment on large marketplaces, at prices only slightly below retail.
The same test catches both. Compare against several real dealers, and when something is well under the cluster, ask why. There is always a reason, and it is never in your favour.
Contents of the video
0:00 To people if it looks too
Alright folks, I had an email from someone. They sent me a whole bunch of links to pages on the internet. I looked at those pages and I saw very, very cheap Pioneer kit. So, the reason for this video is to explain to people if it looks too good to be true, it is too good to be true. If you see items at ridiculously, and I mean ridiculously low prices, then... Please don't go there because you will end up with one thing and that is disappointment. Now the reason I'm saying this is, I'll give you a bit of info here. Let's say for example we've got shops all the way around the world, shops or stores that will sell DJ gear. Now let's say for example that is a CD player from Pioneer. Now it's a very dodgy looking CD player from Pioneer because it's a camera. You'd never get anything out of this.
0:51 Pounds, euros, dollars, just a thousand
Well, you wouldn't be able to put a CD in it, but that, let's say for example, that in one shop, in one store is a thousand. Pounds, euros, dollars, just a thousand. Let's say in another shop up the road in another town, that item could be 1,010. In another shop, another few miles up the road, it could be say 980. Now the price will fluctuate very slightly according to the profit margin of that particular shop has. And also maybe if they have a sale on. But all of a sudden, if you see that item there for let's say 250 on the internet, then there is a very, very good chance that that is not a legit company, a legit item, and the only thing you will probably end up with is disappointment. And I can near enough guarantee you, you will not get anything through the post because...
2:16 You will get peace of mind
They're probably con artists. Now, I'm not going to give you any links, I'm not going to show you any addresses, but I will show you the prices that they were saying you could buy these items for, alright? So, all I can tell you is if you want to buy good quality items, make sure you buy them from reputable dealers. More importantly as well, when you buy them from reputable dealers... You will get peace of mind. You will get someone to talk to. You can ask them questions. And the most important thing of all, you will get a guarantee. So in other words, if that item goes wrong, you'll have someone to send it back to. If you buy from places like this, more than likely even if you do get the item, they don't give a monkeys. They've got their money and once it goes wrong, which it probably will go wrong,
Tough. You've got to get it fixed and then you take it to somewhere else and they'll charge you an arm and a leg. So I'll pause the camera and we'll have a look. Practice and enjoy. Thank you.
This transcript was produced automatically from the audio of the video and may contain mistakes.
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