Vendor Pricing

[Zooomer]

No, don't get me wrong, I agree that businesses have to raise their price over what they paid to make a profit. I understand that. But the problem I have is the attitude about the "price gouging". ZZP often comes off on other boards like they are selling things at rock bottom prices and not making a dime. They will "claim poverty" in hopes of making the buyers feel bad for them and accept their inflated prices. Sure, they may sell some of their custom parts at little to no markup (but I highly doubt it), but they make loads of money on the common parts that people can find cheaper elsewhere (SS lines, struts, gaskets, tranny fluid, etc). But people think that ZZP is selling these things to help them out and they know grand prixs, so they won't rip me off. Yes, they will rip you off, and they do it every day. Maybe "rip off" isn't the correct term. But they seriously inflate prices, and people that trust ZZP to be fair sadly pay those prices.

Just my $.02 on it. Sorry to take this thread off track...

Anything can usually be purchased cheaper if you shop and shop. The point of ZZP is that it's taylored to our cars and it's a one stop shop. You know that what you buy will work and it's easy to find things. We charge less than the dealer, less than other 3800 vendors and give out advice on the use of products. I fail to see how this is price gouging. Look at the stainless brake lines. They are a custom part. You can't buy "longer than stock" stainless lines unless you shop around. We're cheaper than most places like PFYC on the lines and I posted a 30% off coupon here for you guys.

Take the trans fluid you posted as an example. 1st off, it's not sold anywhere but GM dealerships. You won't find it at Advance or Napa. Then when you do call a dealer, not many stock it. you have to call or drive around. When you do go to pick it up will they tell you how much your trans takes? How about if you are installing a shift kit? What if you have a 245 or 258mm converter? Will they tell you the difference between Dex 6 and 3? do they know?
All of these things come into play with the products we sell. That's what distinguishes us from Summit or Jeggs. Our parts are specific and so is the information and tech support. Hell, we have an entire article written just on that transmission fluid. How many places that sell it have written an article? I wrote it personally after much R&D and testing. I can even give you HP loss numbers based on the transmission fluids temperature. So how much is that worth? Is your time worthless? Would you go to work for free at your job? ZZP is my job. Don't you think we deserve to make an extra 50 cents on a gallon of trans fluid to compensate for the R&D and tech articles or are you a person that shops our site for the information and then drives around to save $2 on products so we don't 'rip you off'? If that's the case I would ask that you stop ripping us off by gleaning our information for free. At least contribute by sending us tech articles to post, buying our stuff or sending a donation...

Edit for another thought...About 1/2 of the parts on ZZP are designed, developed by ZZP and custom for your car. How can you even put a baseline price on something that doesn't exist? What do you think funds the development of these products? Looking at your mod list, you're running 1.84 rockers. Guess what? ZZP developed those. Someone had to pay for the wages of a person taking the time to test rocker ratios and find out the highest you can safely run without valve float on stock springs. So you are reaping the benefit of the so called "price gouging" by ZZP. I'm sorry for going on and on but as the owner I've poured blood, sweat and tears into this company and re-invested our profits into developing parts to help the comunity. i would hope that ZZP could have enough appreciation that we don't have to be the brunt of baseless attacks for selling merchandise at a profit.