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Why don't I get Reseller pricing

I ordered in a brand new top case for a MacBook Pro this last week from welovemacs for $40 under your used price because you will not give me reseller pricing. I would much rather do business with iFixit but I need to eat too. Parts pricing is critical to my business. I have a Texas Sales and Use Tax permit and I buy a lot of parts, just not from you. I am a Authorized Apple VAR, Authorized Reseller for ViewSonic, LaCie, Umax, Sonnet, Battery-Biz, Adobe, Microsoft and several others but I have to pay retail to you. Why? By the way the rest of the Team "Master Techs" are all professional mac people, this is our business. We help you. How about some reciprocity?

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My question would be does iFixit give reseller pricing to anyone? If so it should be applied evenly--if not I'm sure they will understand if our business purchases are made elsewhere. Ralph

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No offense was intended in my earlier statement--I am no longer a salaried tech as I work for free. That being said I do try to keep cost down so I may continue to give computers to kids with a fixed retirement income.

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A few days ago I wrote to iFixit because I was having moral reservations about sending a question asker to them for a part they had listed at $750 used. I gave them a link to where it could be bought for half that price used. I did not receive a reply. Lucky for the customer that someone at iFixit posted a reply that they were out of the part and I then posted the link to the question asker. Even though the prices are higher, I feel confident that iFixit has tested the unit. That justifies a higher price to me. When my customers want their machine fixed in a hurry I feel fine about ordering from them. One of my points here is that we help iFixit sell parts. For that we receive nothing. A credit on parts for accepted answers would not be out of line for the hundreds of hours we've spent helping them succeed.

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I agree with you Rich, but it comes down to this; we volunteer our time because we want to. Neither Kyle or any other staff member ask us to spend our free time helping them. So I would not expect iFixit to grant me any credit or discounts on parts.

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I understand Maj, I would prefer to buy all my parts here. That was my ultimate goal with bringing up this topic. I was just hoping that iFixit would help me remain competitive so I could buy more from them and save time searching for prices.

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There seems to be a lot of assumptions that we get parts for cheap and make a huge profit on everything. Let me counter with some facts.

First, ethic. Last I knew, it is a violation of contract with Apple for authorized resellers to sell parts to the public. Just like Apple, they are supposed to offer repair to the public, not parts sales. Some of our competitors offer much cheaper parts than us because they are violating their contract with Apple and are directly selling parts to the public. We have not gone this route for cheaper parts and cheaper prices because it's wrong to do so.

Second, quality. Some of our competitors offer cheaper parts because they are Chinese parts that are oftentimes incomplete. You get what you pay for. We have found that ordering parts from China is hit-or-miss on whether the parts have all the promised components or not. Sometimes it works great, and we can offer parts for cheaper. Sometimes the parts are missing vital components that are promised on our products, and we can't sell them. We have purchased parts from competitors and have been shocked to find vital pieces missing, contrary to what was indicated on their site. It's like eBay: you pay less, but the risk is higher. We actually have a pretty strict testing process. We're certainly not perfect, and malfunctions do happen, but we try really hard to ensure that a part purchased from iFixit is great quality.

It turns out that just as you need to eat, so do we! Would you prefer that we offer bad parts by unethical means? We're not willing to go that route. Our desire is to offer products that are as competitively priced as possible without compromising quality or ethic. And we're proud of that.

Come on guys. We're not sitting on a pile of cash while you try to scrape a living in a good trade. Business and pricing is a complicated situation (as the back-and-forth between rdklinc and Majesty indicates), but we're interested in maintaining a relationship of brand trust with our customers at a competitive rate. If we can lower prices, we will. If we can't, we won't. That's all we can do!

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+ I completely respect where you stand and I'm glad someone from staff chimed in on this one. I see that some of the parts like the DSI Screen, Tools, And the Tech Pro Work station are actually a pretty great deal. I'm gonna be purchasing that workstation soon. All in all it is a great site!! Keep up the good work.

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Policy clearly stated. +

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Thanks Ben for your input

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So you don't get parts from dismantling donated/recycled laptops? That would be pretty surprising.

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rdklinc, the problem with getting all of our parts from donated/recycled laptops is that many times those devices are donated or recycled because the key components that we want to sell are already ruined.

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On what grounds were you rejected?

I haven't applied for reseller pricing, because even with the discount, iFixit prices are often still double what I can find on eBay (usually from LaptopAid) or elsewhere. If iFixit can get people to buy at their prices, more power to them, but it's too expensive for me, because like Rich, I have to eat. I imagine the most common iFixit buyer is probably not the professional, but a more average laptop user who just needs a part or two to fix a personal computer, and then go on with non-computer-fixing life. Actually, I'm pretty sure of this, because you only have to look at a few numbers to realize a professional tech buying every part on iFixit would quickly go out of business. It's a matter of the ideal target audience, and for iFixit, that audience most of the time is not the professional. There's nothing wrong with that -- selling to non-professionals at big prices has obviously paid off, and the convenience of a site that makes sense and lets users find the right part obviously makes it worthwhile for the users to pay a premium.

But then again, I'm a scavenger and I do everything I can to avoid buying parts. Like I always say, the cheapest source of parts is a dead laptop (which, I imagine, is where iFixit probably gets its parts too....)

Actually, I take all that back -- the screwdriver kit is a GREAT deal.

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+ both screwdriver sets!

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+ I agree with rdklinc. If you need a lot of parts, buying dead or broken machines is the way to go.

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Here's the link for all you resellers out there:

http://www.ifixit.com/Info/reseller

Just fax us your business license or reseller certificate and we can upgrade you to reseller.

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5% isn't reseller pricing. You can get 5% with any survey filled out or by using the code on the card from the previous order. Besides I think I already did this. When does this 5% show up?

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Yes, you are already signed up as a reseller. When you are logged into your account all the prices and shipping costs you see on our website are the discounted price. If you are a new reseller, then the discount takes affect right when we upgrade your account, but you may need to logout/login to see the new pricing.

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I must agree that pricing is not one of iFixit's strong points. When I first discovered this site, I had the daunting task of almost completely rebuilding the Macbook my crazed girlfriend tap danced and stomped on. One example is the Optical Drive I found on the site. It was a used older optical drive and I found a newer one that was actually the latest Optical Drives for the pro at the time (UJ865A) for HALF the price as the older and used one. I believe that if iFixit makes their prices more competitive, they will be a force to be reckoned with being that we have the power of directing possible customers to not only guides necessary for repair, but also the parts at a reasonable price. Although there will be short term profit hit, in the long run you'll gain customers who will eventually revisit and purchase again, which means more profit in the long-run.

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Like I mentioned above, I think it's a matter of what iFixit's target audience is. If iFixit is doing well getting $80 profit on a part, and is consistently selling that part, then why would they lower the price to $20 profit in order to attract the attention of professionals? In a way, you could say we're in the same business as iFixit, and we're essentially asking to get parts at cost, which may not be business that iFixit considers worthwhile. For instance, I am constantly pestered by friends asking to buy my parts, and these are people who do the same thing I do. But I've worked hard to get the parts I have, and so to sell them all off to friends at little or no profit not only equates to a waste of my time, but it depletes my inventory of parts I need to do my own job. So unless I'm feeling really nice, I generally tell them, "Hey, I managed to get these parts, so if you're in the same business and you know what you're doing, go find your own!"

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I agree, but ur underestimating the average consumer. It doesn't take a professional to quickly find parts online at a discounted price. I'm nowhere near a professional, at the moment I'm speaking as a consumer, and I must say that it took less than 5 minutes to realize how much cheaper I could find a better part at a lower price. Professionals aren't the only ones looking for a good deal, every consumer is.

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I don't think I am underestimating the average consumer. The average consumer doesn't take the extra time. The average consumer walks into Best Buy and pays $40 plus tax for a cable that they could easily get on eBay for $5. If you are looking elsewhere and finding a better price online, you're the exception. Similarly, the average consumer is going to iFixit and buying an Airport card for $79 that they could get for $15 shipped on eBay. But if iFixit lowered their price to $15 shipped, they would lose a ton of profit, and the transaction would barely be worth doing. The convenience factor is in play here, and I imagine most novice iFixers would rather have the convenience of buying the part they need on the same site that informed them of the part in the first place, regardless of whether they are paying a premium or not. iFixit is unique in that it gives users a lot of confidence that the part is the right part, whereas so many other sites do not offer that same assurance and level of certainty.

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Again, my point is, there are sites geared toward professionals (laptopaid.com), and there are sites geared toward non-professionals (iFixit). Both approaches are valid, and can be profitable. But by telling a site that is clearly taking one approach that they need to take the other...that is asking that site to go against the strategy that made it successful in the first place. I'm sure iFixit has made the decision that it is worth missing out on "professional" orders in order to capture the additional profit available from "non-professional" orders.

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I understand what you are saying RDKL. More power to iFixit if they sell parts at 150% of their value. My only point is that for every costumer that pays that over inflated price there are 10 that are simply walking away. It makes no business sense, and there's no longevity in that type of business mentality, plain and simple.

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mayer will be eternally grateful.