Be leary of "sales" and who you shop with.

General General Discussion
1

Last week I was shopping online at a bigger optic store that is not a site sponsor. Its a fairly large optic store, maybe the size of a planet. I added a few trijicon scopes and DBAL I2 lasers to my cart and I saved them since I figured they usually run Labor Day sales and I could compare prices with another store and then make my purchase. This place sometimes has decent prices. So today I got a 10% off coupon code in my email so I went back to my cart to check out. I probably would have never noticed, but their cart has a price alert that says you items have increased from xxx.xx to yyy.yy and low and behold all the price increases were a little over 10%. The increase was for all the items in my cart, not just one or two.

Suspicious… yes indead. Maybe it’s just a coincidence but something is telling me they raise there prices to mark them on sale.

2

Some optics stores that move in elliptical orbits around a star also have notoriously slow delivery times and a high incidence of backorders, maybe due to variable gravitational pull.

3

To some folks it’s the Botach of the optics world; planet if you will. I cut them loose years ago.

4

Common sales technique is to jack up prices, then offer a “discount”. Lots of places do it- which is why it literally pays to shop around.

5

Pretty much, though I thought this was common knowledge. Have seen it with a number of places, both online and physical stores over the years. That and certain items going OOS just before a major sale and then coming back in stock about a week later. Some of the more sneaky places with up the price slowly a few weeks prior to a major sale, or shopping season, before offering a discount for a sale.

Pays to both shop around as well as know the going prices for items that you are interested in.

6

PSA does this quite often on ammo and lowers whenever they run a free shipping deal… Annoying.

7

OP I refuse to shop at that place for similar, more egregious, reasons. YMMV

8

Does Botach own them too? Or related to them one way or another? They have a very similar business model

9

No, just similar crappy service.

10

I have zero use for either one of them.

11

Yeah, some planet-sized optics warehouse operations can be obnoxious. I too have left their orbit in search of sunnier systems.

If you’re looking at a commodity type optic, Amazon often has good prices. But they have their own shifty business too.

As for Botach, I found them quite decent to buy from for a brief window of roughly 2012-2013, but lately they seem to be back to their old tricks with “in stock” items that aren’t, inexplicable order cancellations, prices at or above MSRP, etc.

12

I knew several stores did this but didnt know they did it too. They were cheapest on several things I have purchased in the past, hints me buying from them. I wont be doing business with them in the future.

13

I’ve been to their warehouse in South Central LA and they will take care of you there, I will at least credit them with that. (Mil/LE ID required) I’ve only ordered from them online once without issue but with their rep I don’t want to risk it again.