JED@SU-AI.ARPA (Jim Davidson) (03/16/86)
There's an article in Vol 3, #1 of the Bay Area Consumers' Checkbook, that may not have been reported here. It presents a list of discount VCR places in the Bay Area. Each is rated for price according to a composite score for a particular sample of VCR's. The reference point for price was Comp-u-store (discount mail-order), arbitrarily set at $100. East-West Appliance (Berkeley, Sunnyvale) was the cheapest, with a score of $93. Consumers Distributing was second ($95), but they don't carry top of the line stuff. Next came Sounds Unique (SJ) ($96), Mansi's (SF) ($96), and International Video (SF) ($97). For comparison, Macy's and Pacific Stereo came in at $119, and The Good Guys at $155 (!). There was no attempt to discern which places, if any, carried gray market merchandise.