Son snapped the lowers on his Reba forks a while ago (loose QR we think).
Anyway, after being quoted £230 for the replacement part, tracked down two for sale on Amazon (not marketplace, straight forward Amazon shop), one at £38.20 and the other at £48.91.
One was the matt black colour, the other was gloss. I spotted the gloss first and got it ordered, and then spotted the matt and ordered that to see which I preferred (both were maxle only, but changing the wheel to maxle wasn't a problem).
Instantly both listings went to "out of stock" when I bought them, so I assume I got the last ones.
Both arrived, both looked fine (full set of wiper seals and foam rings included, bushings looked sound), so settled on the matt black. Whizzed the whole thing off to TFTuned who happily fitted the new lowers without issue as part of the standard service. I waited until the forks came back just in case TFTuned said they were dodgy etc, and then returned the other set of lowers to Amazon.
Now instead of being listed at £38, they are retailing for £225.99, which is more or less the original retail price I'd been quoted earlier.
Seems their system has responded to some demand in the system for this product and moved them off their slow moving stock / sell it quick list and got them back in at full value.
Just thought it was interesting...
Sorry for anyone who ends up needing these! I did think about taking a risk and ebaying them / posting them on here, but I didn't feel too confident about standing behind any warranty, and I doubt there is too big a market for Reba lowers anyway.
The ones you returned are now on there 'used' and cheaper 🙂
Doesn't surprise me if there is some sort of formula behind their pricing that says keep dropping the price every x days until someone buys them then the price resets.
I imagine all the big online stores have similar, I doubt anyone goes round the CRC warehouse looking for all the odd size stuff to reduce, it'll all be automated.
There's certainly some bargains on there if you're lucky - new reba 29 steerer assembly for under fifty quid.
http://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/ is very useful for price tracking amazon products. There are obvious fluctuations around times of year, gift giving holidays, traditional times for sales, then it also seems to go off the age and availability of a product and presumable also stock levels and demand.
All big retailers do this. Stands to reason, doens't it? If something's not selling knock it down - if it starts to sell, put it back up again.
I'm not surprised about it, just nice to see it in action.
I think when I posted the link the product was in stock (not the "used" item), though might be wrong.
Of course, the important thing is the forks are working again!
1-2 month delivery. So they are just quoting price to get a set in from the distributor whereas before they were clearing stock.
Do Amazon really hold stock of Reba lowers themselves?
Or is it a third party seller?
I've had pike and bluto lowers from Amazon, shipped via Prime so stock must be held
Had some chains and the Fishers invoice to Amazon was in the box
If it says supplied / fulfilled by amazon then it is on a shelf in a fulfillment centre somewhere. I work in the Swansea one and they are currently expanding stock carrying capacity at this site up to 16.5million items by christmas. Think its currently at 11million.
Sorry for anyone who ends up needing these! I did think about taking a risk and ebaying them / posting them on here, but I didn't feel too confident about standing behind any warranty, and I doubt there is too big a market for Reba lowers anyway
Could you not have ebayed them for say ~£100 as "used other" noting the lack of any warranty, but still undercutting the supposed 'market value' you'd still be saving someone else ~£130ish and recouping some of the cost of your son's replacement a bit?
OP pricing is offen driven by fully automatic algorithms which look at various factors including competitors prices. I had a guy who worked for me who had worked for Amazon on various projects.
fully automatic algorithms which look at various factors including competitors prices...
Whilst I don't doubt that, I think that algorithm needs a little tweak...I was looking for a Garmin ANT+ dongle which typically sells for around $60 but which was being sold by at least one marketplace vendor for $6200...
Key part of what you said markgraylist:
marketplace vendor
Amazon don't set the prices for vendors, however there are tools that help marketplace people set their own and sometimes they go mental. More likely though it's fat-finger data entry by the vendor.
Could you not have ebayed them for say ~£100 as "used other" noting the lack of any warranty, but still undercutting the supposed 'market value' you'd still be saving someone else ~£130ish and recouping some of the cost of your son's replacement a bit?
I did think that, but went down the zero hassle route. Though to be fair I did expect them to go back into stock at a price similar to the one I bought them at.
If anyone does need them, I think its fair to assume that the "warehouse" stock item is the set I received, so they'd be a good bet.
And yes, these were Amazon product (at least, not marketplace or other third party sales).
dunno if you use or follow bikebargains but 9 times out of 10 she posts a link to an Amazon deal and I click through the price is far higher than she'd listed it. Obviously all the traffic (whether resulting in sales or not) affects the price.
+1 for assuming most web retailers who discount use similar algorithms.
Amazon seemingly run dutch auctions in some categories, take the X01 cassettes PSA from last week, started at £211, and the price dropped each day until hitting 93 i think, at which point they bounced back to 140 then down a bit then back at £211,
usually shows 1 in stock, so its a gamble on price, wether to buy now or wait it out for another drop
quite what causes this price to start dropping is seemingly random
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dunno if you use or follow bikebargains but 9 times out of 10 she posts a link to an Amazon deal
is "she" not just a bot?
Extremely advanced tech/retail company is extremely advanced in pricing "shocker" 😛
The Pikes I bought a few weeks back were £349 when my mate sent me the link, when I looked they'd dropped to £329 so put them in my 'basket' & went to checkout but realized that I'd left my creditcard in my office so next day at work I go to pay & find they were down to £311 so got 'em bought pronto!