I’m frustrated by the price increase, but I can’t blame TCP. I don’t expect them to sell at a loss to honor the original price they were given. it seems in line with the way prices have gone in the industry the last couple years. I don’t like it, but I’m undecided whether or not I’ll cancel. I Doubt another option will come along at a significantly cheaper price, including the MMC one.

FWIW, I know mistakes can be made by anyone, and small operations are more vulnerable to getting overwhelmed, but I’ve never had any problems with TCP.

 

yeah, this definitely isn't on TCP, especially with price raises hitting every store, but as a store i also don't think passing on "we need more money" from the manufacturer to the customer last minute is that fair. a single customer is less equipped for price hikes than a business, and if i were TCP reading these posts i'd have a lot of words for planet x along the lines of "thanks for running off our customers on X product, now my order's gonna sell less and i'm not going to carry your company's product if you're going to screw over the people paying for it."

 

I'm not sure I completely follow your logic as presented. The end customer may not want to pay the 15-20% upcharge from the manufacturer, but they're likely only paying that additional cost for just one figure, whereas the storefront delivering it is paying that same 15-20% upcharge for every single figure across an entire release; and worse, if it doesn't sell, they're left with stock taking up space, or selling it at a discount, seeing little profit, if any. A customer can easily cancel a single order if they don't want to pay, but the business can't easily cancel dozens or hundreds of orders in the same fashion. The business shouldn't be any more obligated to take a loss than the end customer is when the manufacturer changes pricing. The business can insist on no longer carrying products from that manufacturer, but ultimately, if there's a demand for it, they risk leaving money on the table not carrying it, even considering the hassle.

 

$200 lol

"Well, FT is doing it, so why can't we?" - last words of PlanetX, late 2021

I like PlanetX stuff. But nothing outside of their huge Trypticon or Omega figures should command this nonsense.

 

Or... the whole industry is more expensive now than a year or two ago. Including TT mainline, MP, and most 3Ps.This has nothing to do with FansToys.

 

Most businesses can sidestep that by simply making a disclaimer against typographical errors, even barring that, the chances of someone actually having the time and resources to pursue such a relatively frivolous lawsuit is unlikely. Plus, pretty sure the chances of most any business going after an international manufacturer specializing in unlicensed products made from IP theft is slim, and them winning even less likely; collecting, virtually impossible.

I remember this argument coming up back when the Zeta Unicron was about to release and many sellers had to raise prices to match the manufacturer's new pricing. A lot of people complained it went against pre-order price guarantees, whether the seller even had one or not, and were left to either pay up or miss out. What I remember finding at the time was that there was a legal precedent protecting business in similar instances, where stove manufacturers were able to legally raise the pre-negotiated price of stoves? when the price of steel went up. The courts sided with the business given that not raising the pre-negotiated prices would present a substantial loss to their business.

 

You're wrong about Cang. CT raised their combiner prices last year. All of the limbs were about 10% more expensive on reissue.

You're wrong about MMC. They're raising prices on their cliff jumper (+25%) and other reissues.

Takara raised their mainline and MP prices.

XTB raised their prices (although good luck to them with that)

FT raised prices.

Zeta kept prices about the same - but they're the outliers. Not part of the majority. Takara, FT, MMC,Zeta, and XTB are the most prolific MP companies and 4 out of 5 raised prices. This is an industry wide issue and is definitely not due to "other companies following fanstoys".

 

Legal issues... You mean Hastak can sue these 3rd Party manufacturers?

 

When I was talking about CT I was only talking about the legend figures not MP stuff. And if the item was so super popular its understandable the reissues would go up in price.
I make paintings and the prints of my paintings I always first sell them as a limited 500 prints at $50 each.... Then once I sell out of them I make reissues prints at the price of $125 each. Didn't cost me more to make the prints, just that it's such a popular item I might as well charge more.
Like take MMC carnifax, in the pass year it has become something a lot of new 3p collectors want. if the demand get that high why not reissues it with a $50 markup price. It would still be cheaper then what it's selling for on ebay.

 

CT has never released that legends figure before. We need to compare apples to apples; therefore we need to look at reissue prices and changes to announced prices. A small legends scale figure might be "cheap" but it isn't evidence one way or another of a price increase or decrease. How could it be? We haven't seen a figure in this scale from this company before. The figure could be $10 or $100 and we would still not know if that was an indication of a price increase for other CT products.

All the 3P MP companies that I've mentioned have either A) increased prices on announced preorders and set price points or B) announced reissues for more money than they originally sold for. These are apples to apples comparisons which demonstrate an increase in price-point.

At the end of the day, every figure reissue SHOULD be cheaper if we expect the company to take the same amount of profit because there is no R&D or tooling cost. All of these toys are "popular items" which is why they can get away with increasing the price... this is not something unique to MMC so I'm not sure how you could possibly defend MMC here. The other companies (like PX) are doing the exact same thing when they increase their prices.

If you think this figure is too expensive then don't buy it, but let's not sit here and pretend that rising prices in the TF market are unique to PX. That's disingenuous and silly.

 

I disagree with Planet X's decision. You'd think they had figured out the price before opening Preorders. I'll give the benefit of the doubt that something happened or a grave miscalculation, but I hope this never becomes common practice. I'm staying on with my TCP preorder it just goes from half paid to 1/3 paid.

 

Nobody said it's unique to PX... I mean in the past few pages on this forum people listed from a bunch of companies where something similar happened. You must of misunderstood me.
It would be best if planet x could give a reason to why they change prices... was it a calculations error? Did the government shut down another factory? Are they adding more to the figure, let say extra hands, head, chest piece, shoulder, so you could convert it to the mtmte/LL grimlock from it MD verison? Or what.

 

That is ABSOLUTELY NOT what you said originally. You're changing your story.

Did you delete your original comment? Why?

You were claiming that "I don't see a price jump with these companies." (re: MMC and CT). Then I demonstrated that they did in fact raise their prices... so you deleted your comment? Lmao.

 

Yeah sure.

Hence multiple other 3P keeping the same pricing structure. PX is in the minority.

 

How could you possibly think that?

TT increased prices (all figures)

FT increased prices (all figures)

MMC increased prices (reissues, probably future figures)

XTB increased prices (all figures)

Zeta is the only major MP manufacturer that didn't raise prices (yet).

These are by far the most prolific MP companies. Do you have any contradictory evidence or is this purely speculation based on your bruised fee-fees and dying wallet?

 

Never once did I say Only PX is raising it prices. There's over 100+ 3p tf companies. Yes a few are raising their prices, many aren't. Yes I don't see a price jump in MMC reformatted line, I don't care about reissues because I buy them 1st issues, transform element MM beastwars line, GENERATION toys beast line, I don't see prices jumping $30+ after company state its original price from the lines I collect. But others have stated that other compaines have done this before. Never did I say PX was the only company to have ever done this. You misunderstood what I was saying, I should of wrote it out similar and gone into detail, that was my fault. Sorry

 

I'll judge the value for money once I get it.

Always been one I was going to pick up regardless. If it isn't good for the price they won't convince me to get any future dynos.

 

Alright, I can't even see your original comment anymore so there's really no point in me saying anything else.

Apology accepted.

My apologies in turn if I came off as persnickety... I'm just tired of people blaming one or another 3P company for the price increases when that's the trend in the entire market. Nobody is lowering prices.

Also, I agree that 3Ps changing prices after they have been announced is shitty. It's unfair to collectors who have to actually create a budget which then needs to be changed. I budget my collecting but another $20 is far from sinking the ship. Still, I know this isn't the case for everyone.

 

For 250.