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Retailer Calls Rivals' Bluff On "HDMI Scam"

Posted by samzenpus on from the digital-snake-oil dept.

nk497 writes "Retailer Kogan is offering customers of rival stores free HDMI cables to highlight the 'scam' of selling the cables for £100, saying its own £4 cable works just as well. 'An HDMI cable is an HDMI cable,' Kogan said. 'It's a digital cable. You either get a picture or you don't. Don't get conned into buying a 'fancy' HDMI cable because it will make no difference!' Rival retailers Currys and John Lewis said they preferred to offer customers a 'variety' of cables. 'Each of our HDMI cables offers excellent quality and value for money, and by providing our customers with a range of different cables which offer different specifications, we are able to help them find one to suit their specific needs, with features such as different cable lengths, ultra slim and high speed,' said a spokesman for John Lewis, which sells cables for £20 to £99."

9 of 664 comments (clear)

  1. Best Buy tried to sell me an HDMI cable... by Missing.Matter · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When I went to buy a new TV, Best Buy tried to sell me a HDMI cable. I actually needed one so I said sure how much? $35. I got in to an argument with the sales rep about how it would do nothing for my picture quality. I told him I'd give him $10 for it, and I knew that was about 700% profit for him so it works out for both of us.

    So he told me he couldn't do that and I asked for a manager, maybe he could. Manager says he can't do that and this is an amazing HDMI cable and will make the picture better than any cheap cable I could buy. I told him I'm an electrical engineer and I know he's lying straight to my face to make a couple extra bucks. At that point I was pretty fed up so I said you can keep your $1000 TV. I guess the real mistake was thinking I'd get an honest sell at Best Buy

    1. Re:Best Buy tried to sell me an HDMI cable... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Okay, here's where you messed things up.

      1) A manager at a Best Buy doesn't have all that much authority. Where you talking about THE store manager, or more likely were you just talking about a department head? I worked at a different big box electronics firm and to sell an item at below marked value (other than large item purchases that had built in wiggle room) you had to go to the department manager on the floor. He had to go to the department head, and the department head had to go to the store manager and it was ultimately the store manager's decision. Then the store manager had to relay down the chain of command back to the consumer whether it was doable or not. And if it was doable, they had to contact the head of the cashier department who would then notify the cashier dealing with the customer that there would be a price change. Then you'd actually have to make the edit to the ticket, which involved going through about 10 different menu pages until you got to the actual price change. Is it a good system? Not when you want to make the price change but it made it nearly impossible for a salesperson to sell an item to their friend at a huge discount. But the other thing it did was made it nearly impossible to even want to make the price change. It's not cost effective to make that many people do some other task when they could ring up everyone else at the store without having to go through all that hassle.

      2) Your asking price was way too low. You offered to pay $10. The cables themselves from what I've seen go for a wholesale price of about $4 for 6 feet of cable. So you weren't offering 700% profit. If he sold at $10 and the cable cost $4 then it's a profit margin of 250%. And the only HDMI cable I see from Best Buy.com is a 9' cable the best wholesale price I see on a 9'-10' cable is about $7. So if it costs them $7 per cable and they sell it at $10 there's not enough profit margin to reorder the cable. Sure profit is made but why as a business would you want to do that deal if it means you can't replenish your stock. This is the thing that people who haven't worked a lot of retail don't seem to understand a lot of the time. Yes you pay a high markup, but you do that so that the stores can operate, pay salaries, and reorder merchandise so that when you want an item you know that the stores have that item. Like I work in a shoe store and we get shoes for $87 dollars, and we sell them for $180. That allows us to sell a shoe, reorder it and make exactly $6 in pure profit after restocking our shelves.

      3) If you knew the picture quality would be the same with a cheaper cable why not just tell the salesperson they were wrong and get the cheaper cable?!? You tried to get them to take the "good" cable down to the price level of the cheap cable, because even though you thought they'd be the same quality there must still have been a part of you that wanted the "good" cable, otherwise just tell them to forget the cable and pick up the cheaper one yourself. The bottom line as a guy who has worked in retail for over 10 years straight is that I see people all the time that basically want handouts. And IMO the only reason you wanted this special discount is that you wanted to get the better cable but you didn't want to have to pay more than the price of a cheaper cable. But you're not paying for JUST the cable, if you want a nice name brand cable you're also paying for QC, packaging, shipping to the stores, etc. And all that drives the price up.

  2. NO it depends... by johnjones · · Score: 5, Interesting

    its a bit like saying you can plug in a CAT 5 cable and get gigabit...
    the answer is it depends...
    the longer the cable the more the signal degrades and just because its digital does not mean it will produce the same results..

    have a read of this

    http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/long-hdmi-cable-bench-tests/evaluation-conclusion

    I guess the Kogan cables are not very long... dont get me wrong I think they are right most HDMI cables are a scam... but someone needs to actually test them before commenting...

    but honestly who is going to listen... they are after fast bit of press... slashdot used to be about technical things..

    regards

    John Jones

    1. Re:NO it depends... by reashlin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      NO NO NO

      Network speeds will degrade with poor quality cables. This is because data will become corrupt and be re-sent. Speeds "appear" to decrease because the ratio of data:noise will decrease.

      With HDMI there is no "re-sending" of data. So when the corrupt data comes through, no picture comes through.

      You _will_ _not_ get a lower quality picture from a cheap HDMI picture. You will get no picture at all.

    2. Re:NO it depends... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There is a thin slice between "perfect" and "nothing", commonly referred to as "sparkle" or "snow". Substantial amounts of pixel data are being tossed on the floor; but not quite enough for the system to just give up and declare the link dead.

      Unlike analog interference, though, if you are in sparkle territory, you can pretty conclusively declare the system "broken".

  3. Re:I don't know how the salesmen go to bed at nigh by Glothar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I seriously heard some "sales associate" at Best Buy tell someone that documents would print faster if they bought a parallel cable with gold connectors. While it wasn't the first time I'd heard Best Buy's sales people spouting blatant lies (1998: "You'll want the best CPU you can buy if you want to run Word", 1999: "Sound cards fail all the time. I'd never buy one without the extra warranty." 2000: "WindowsME is way faster than Windows98, and if you don't upgrade now, you'll never be able to.") it is still the winner for sheer absurdity and blatant attempt to bilk another $10 from a customer.

    I was just passing by on my way to find a new printer, but when the guy said it, I couldn't help myself. I broke out laughing. Pretty loud. The guy and his two gullible customers looked at me. I was in an odd mood, so I asked the guy how fast electricity traveled in gold. Then I asked how fast it traveled in copper. He didn't know either. I told the customers that he was lying to them. Pointed at one of the cheapest cables on the shelf, and told them that was the one they wanted. The sales guy looked pissed. A few other people nearby were watching. As I walked away, some manager-looking guy asked if I needed help. I told him that I came to buy a printer, but that Office Max was only a few blocks away and their sales staff didn't lie to their customers.

    Since then, I probably spent only a couple hundred dollars in Best Buy, almost entirely on DVDs. When given the choice, for any piece of hardware (even cables) I'll go to any other store. While I'm sure that in the long run, Best Buy makes decent money off lying to customers, I'd easily estimate that its lost a few thousand dollars of sales just off me. At the very least, it lost about $160 ($150 printer + $10 for uselessly-upgraded cable) that day for that guy's stupid attempt.

  4. Best Buy Loves Selling Snake Oil by MoldySpore · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I literally just had an argument with a Best Buy employee over this the other day. Me and a friend went to the mall because I needed some emergency thermal paste for a PC build I was doing (I was visiting friends 5 hours from my house and had forgot some). I went to Best Buy because they had some for $10 (probably the cheapest thing in the store). After buying the paste, we hung around in the store while my friend's brother went and got a haircut. My friend and I went to the cable section and he asked me about HDMI cables for his HDTV. He showed me the cable he bought (Insignia for ~$40) and asked if it was good. I said it was fine, but that he over paid even for that. I then proceeded to pick up a Monster cable that was only 4 feet long and cost $129 and explain to him that this cable and that cable were the same. A Best Buy employee then came over and started a conversation with me.

    Best Buy Employee: "Can I help you with anything?"
    Me: "No, I'm all set."
    BBE: "I see you have a Monster HDMI cable there. What kind of TV do you have?"
    Me: "Oh I am just explaining to my friend that there is no reason to spend over $100 on a 4' cable when a $5 online will do the same thing"
    BBE: "Well that isn't true. That cable will give you superior sound and video quality. It also has Ethernet over HDMI capability and compatibility for 3D"
    Me: "Well I'm sure it does all of that, but any cable will do that for you as long as it is rated for HDMI 1.4 spec."
    BBE: "It will but that cable will give you better picture quality because it has gold connectors and better shielding"
    Me: "No, it really won't. Unless you have your TV inside a power transfer station with unshielded electrical cables, you will not really need to worry about interference. And picture quality will not be better regardless of what cable you are using."
    BBE: "You are giving your friend bad advice. This cable is better and will give you better -"
    Me: *interrupting him* "If I hooked up the same exact TVs to the same exact source with my cable and this cable, not only would they be the same quality, but my cable would be 15' longer and be able to connect across the room where as this is only capable of connecting to a device close by, and my cable will have cost around $5-20 and this one costs $129. I'd bet you any amount of $ that the difference in picture and sound quality would be indistinguishable."
    BBE: "I'd take that bet, but only if I saw the cable you were going to use first"

    We then went to the computer in the department and I went to Newegg and showed him this cable. He said "Right but that is a nice shielded cable like this one". And I said "Yea, but look at the length and the price." He then basically dismissed what I was saying and said that the Monster cable was still superior.

    I wonder if they train people to be this ignorant? Or could places that sell cables for this price just attract people who buy into the BS?

    --

    "I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."

  5. Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does by LordLimecat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And "truer reds". The salesman wouldn't shut up about how much better Monster cables were at improving reds.

    Possibly a relic of the RCA / S-Video days, where a good S-video cable (I had a monster cable which worked well) really would keep the red from bleeding noticably onto neighboring pixels. I dont remember whether there was a significant difference between standard S-video and monster's, other than that I liked the build quality of the cables better (less likely to get shredded due to thick sheathing).

    Its very possible that the salesperson thought that that same issue persisted to this day even in HDMI-- ignorance, not malice.

  6. Re:But the Best Buy guy said it does by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Err, how often do you move those cables around behind your TV set, anyway?

    its not always what you think.

    one 'guy' that moves things around is heat. heating and a/c and humidity in the house. cables expand and contract and fit (and don't fit!) the connectors and this slow bounce, if you will, causes things to lose connectivity, even if just 1 wire in a bundle. seen it plenty of times. multi conductor cables are a NIGHTMARE (which is why I hate the hdmi designers. what a bunch of losers! 2 opto cables would have done it better but NOOOO they had to have multiple metal-to-metal's and lots of wire and twists and interference. idiots!!! please, if you currently have an hdmi designer in your employ, fire him now. fire him. now.)

    hdmi cables are not even locking cables. (same with older sata cables; dont' get me started on THAT nightmare we call a cable ...). hdmi cables fall out of alignment since the connector is VERY cheap and so are the cable males. cheap and cheap are not a good way to ensure success.

    look at older db9, db25 style connectors. those things were strong enough to lift a house! ;) THOSE were connectors made by visionary men. keyed, robust, cheap to make and they never fell out on their own. compare to hdmi and you'll see the night/day diff in how cables used to be designed vs how they are designed today.

    sometimes you have to re-flex the cables or pre-strain them before you install them. the flex of the cable is not enough compared to the stiffness of the so-called strain relief they use. again, as an analogy, look at an ide cable and how well it stays in (even if you hang the drive UP by it!) vs a sata cable. compare the molex power cables of yesterday to the sata power cables of today. all steps backwards!

    I really hate the backwards move in cable design and quality. its like they are TRYING to make things bad on purpose, refusing to use what worked well in the past - out of spite?

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."