Suncoast new release prices too high? - Page 2

I agree that if you're just looking for mainstream DVD's than you really don't need to go to Suncoast, but there are a lot of DVD's that I've never seen at BB or CC.

Again, I don't go into Suncoast to buy LOTR or X-Men, but I do like to go in and check out the DVD's that I'd never see at the other places. Dave, That sums it up pretty well. A good example is the Anime titles in the lunch boxes, or many of the "Adult titles"...they even have a fairly large "Sports" section that rivals other stores.

The other thing I like about Suncaost is the fact that it feels like a "Hardcore DVD" store and the other shoppers seem like hardcore DVD fans rather than your average J6P. I hate having to push my way through people at Wal-Mart or Best Buy when they're cramming the DVD isles and their kids are picking DVD's off the shelf and throwing them all over the floor. Suncoast just has a better atmosphere for shopping, which is worth the extra money.

That is so incorrect. Hardcore DVD fans know where to find bargains. Suncoast is for clueless mall-dwellers who think Orange Julius is haute cuisine.

It's funny how offended some folks seem to get whenever Suncoast comes up. They just can't stand that the place exists. It's pretty simple, if you don't like it, don't want to pay MSRP, then don't shop there. They've been around for years and will more than likely continue to be around for years to come. Many people that shop there care less about saving money & more about the convenience. The one near me has a few dozen customers who go in once a month and pre-order the titles they'll want the next month. Then they just stop in, pick them up at the counter & go. For some people the extra cash is worth it for that experience. Bargain hunting isn't what these people care about. I've gotten most of the trek boxes there since they had the BB bonus disc & were the same price as BB on release day, plus I got points. I don't shop there much anymore (not like the vhs days), but they can have decent anime prices on release day sometimes. They're only a couple bucks higher on some titles now that BB has started raising prices.

See, this is the kind of attitude that I marvel at. I don't pay full MSRP. I only go into the mall to walk straight into Suncoast (or Electronics Boutique). Pre-order triple points is at release week sale pricing - they come to about 30% off MSRP. I know the Deep Discount prices, and I know how much stuff sells for. Deals are to be had, if you play your cards right.

I find it funny that Best Buy bought Suncoast, Sam Goody, and Musicland about 2-3 years ago. Their intent was to penetrate into smaller mall markets that their current stores weren't intended to do. Those of you who shop there should have noticed Best Buy's influence. Now Sam Goody and Musicland will typically carry DVD players, video games, and fewer Cd's. They're turning into mini-electronic stores. Unfortunately, Best Buy has been tanking due to their purchase of these stores and have recently put many out of business. This past July or June, BB sold the stores to a private investment firm. Those stores would kill if they had reasonable prices.

This is true, but you missed my point. There are 2 kinds of "Hardcore DVD" buyers. 1 who goes out of his/her way to find a bargain, and 1 who doesn't care all that much about the price.

You are a bargain shopper, but I'm not. Does this not make me a hardcore DVD fan? Hardly. The extra $$ I pay at a place like Suncoast is well worth knowing that when I take time out of my schedule to go there, they'll almost likely have what I want, rather than wasting weeks in going to Wal-Mart, Circuit City, and Best Buy trying to find the widescreen version of Casper (true story)

Brian, you're focusing in on what I was getting at. The fact that the prices are higher means that the store doesn't attract the 'casual shopper'. It's set up to attract people who really have a passion for movies and don't mind paying MSRP. Unfortunately, it also drives away the hardcore DVD bargain shopper, but that's not what Suncoast is all about. It's not a bargain store like Wal-Mart.

So to all of the bargain shoppers who are bashing Suncoast, it's not fair to bash a store that isn't marketed toward you.

Actually, they've been tinkering quite a bit with pricing since they were sold from Best Buy.

Example: My fiancee picked up the Indy boxset this weekend, it was still sale-priced at $49.99 - right now, this is the cheapest it seems to be at B&Ms. And a lot of anime recently has been sale-priced $22.99 ($7 off on anime is a decent deal on many titles).


Mark is making the point that not everyone wants the super-deal, just availability.

I'm making a point that some of the niche stuff (anime being the biggest example) IS actually the best deal you can do in B&Ms, and ALMOST the same as internet pricing.

So you have to stop in there TWICE to buy a movie for the same price that better stores charge! That's SO CONVENIENT!



I'll give Suncoast that much. They have a marginally better (or at least slightly more esoteric) selection than most other B&Ms. But you have a telephone, don't you? Call Best Buy or wherever first if you're unsure about them having an obscure title. Or shop online. You apparently have a computer and internet access. It's one thing to not care about the price (are you made of cash or what, man?) but it's just plain silly to spend more money for less convenience. I hate to see smart people throw dollars away.



It's marketed towards people who just don't know any better. If you do know better and you shop there anyway, that's foolish.

Maybe they are picking up the previous DVD preorders and (at the same time) ordering next months. Sounds convenient to me. Call Best Buy???? And do you trust them? Kind of OT: My brother once called a music store looking for drum cymbals and the guy told him he had about a dozen of the cymbals he was interested in. My brother drove over 40 minutes just to hear the guy say "Well, I thought we had them, but now that you're here, how about these..." Argh! It was just a ploy to get him into the store. And don't even get me started on the Circuit City employee (last year) who instisted that they had the Scooby-Doo DVD when it clearly wasn't released yet. Why is that? Why don't they (or I) know any better? It's not that I'm made of cash, but I buy most of my DVD's online so it doesn't really bother me if I spend extra on a DVD I see at Suncoast.

I do all of my DVD researching at this web site and on Amazon, then I buy the DVD's I want, but sometimes I just like to go out and physically browse the DVD's...I usually go to Circuit City to do this, but (when I'm at the mall), I love to go into Suncoast. The selection is awesome and I almost always come accross something that I hadn't seen on the internet or at CC.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't buy a new release like LOTR at Suncoast when I know I can order it much cheaper through Amazon, it's just the 'rare' or 'obscure' titles that make it worth while to go into Suncoast. And even if there were a title I knew I could get online for cheaper...if it's only a few bucks more, I'll deal with the hit and grab it at one of these expensive stores just so I don't have to worry about ordering it online later. In that respect, the convenience of getting right then and there is worth it to me.

Another example...I was looking for 2 particular DVD's for a birthday gift. I saw one of the DVD's at CC for like $15. I didn't pick it up there because they didn't have the other one and if I couldn't actually find the other one, I was going to rethink my gift purchase.

I finally (after a few hours of searching other stores) ended up at Coconuts (i.e. an expensive store) and saw both DVD's. The one DVD (that I saw at CC) was $18 at Coconuts, but I bought it there because I didn't feel like driving back to CC to save $3.

Now I tend to go right to Coconuts because I know I'll have a better shot of getting what I want there, even if it means paying more. Getting what I need, in one shot, in one store, is worth it to me.

Does this really make me foolish? You have to accept the fact that some of us just don't care enough to make sure we've gotten the absolute, best, rock bottom price for every single DVD purchase. I do my bargain shopping most of the time, but there just happens to be times where I just don't care.

My backordered $20 copy from DDD shipped today.

In all the years I've shopped at Best Buy, I don't recall EVER interacting with a sales person in the DVD aisle. Just the way it should be.

Honestly, for niche and hard to find titles, isn't it easier and more cost effective to order it online?

I've been placing a lot more orders online over the last year or so because the prices, especially on many pre-orders, are tough to beat when I'm trying to complete a collection before I turn gray. I live on the US border, so I simply got a US mailbox and when I cross the bridge to pick up my parcels, I stop into BB and Suncoast and Walmart to look for any bargains they, too, might have. I'm really just killing an afternoon by browsing. And as long as our dollar holds up more favourably against the US greenback than it has in the past, I think I'll keep doing things this way.

As far as anime goes, the local Best Buy in these parts has at least as many anime titles, if not perhaps the same titles, as the local Suncoast. In fact, the anime section at this particular Best Buy now takes up a full three-quarters of one side of an aisle. I'm not a big collector of anime, so I don't compare the finer points, but it seems to me that Suncoast, at least here, isn't necessarily the best place to go. If you're looking for ancilliary junk like toys and manga and assorted kitsch and ephemera, Suncoast is kinda cool, and since they almost never sell much of that stuff at full price, it always gets marked down very quickly. If I was younger, I'd probably grab some of that stuff when they're trying to unload it.

You had a point until recently. Like I mentioned earlier, Best Buy started marking a lot of their anime up in the past 6 months. Despite the giant row of it, their selection is still not as good as Suncoast, they just have more quantity on the shelves. And they don't ever put it on sale.



I have some boldface here because people seem to miss the pricing comments. Don't take it as anger, please, just emphasis.

Suncoast/Media Play anime is always $25 on release week, and some studios' stuff are $23.

On the other hand, like I said previously, Best Buy now sells most of their anime at FULL MSRP. Seriously, they went through and re-priced all the older stuff. Bandai are priced 2 measly dollars off MSRP ($27.99) or full MSRP. Pioneer is priced at, I repeat, FULL MSRP at Best Buy.

JUST LIKE WHAT THE ANTI-SUNCOAST folks in the thread are complaining about goes on at Suncoast. I see that everyone chooses to hear MarkHasting's replies about convenience and keep bashing on the prices. Maybe the blockbuster stuff can be found cheaper, easier, but some stuff is ACTUALLY CHEAPER (especially with a replay card and a little care). I repeat, CHEAPER. Hell, if it's a title I don't have Share the Love on, it's often cheaper than Amazon that way too.

The fiancee was doing some last-minute christmas shopping and needed to pick it up (her mom screwed up and bought Fullscreen, she's a little slow). Indiana Jones is still priced $50 at Media Play/Suncoast. Best Buy is back up to $55. Ditto with Target when we looked. With $50 in Replay points, that's $47.50 or so compared to $55.

Babylon 5 seasons are much cheaper on the triple points deal than Best Buy too - the pricing at Suncoast is exactly the same on release week, but the points result in $10-$12 coming back to me in Gift Certificates.

So, it's not so clear cut - oftentimes they CAN be cheaper. And the selection is better. And the service is better. MarkHastings goes because of the service and selection. I go for the BETTER prices. Plus, I can burn the gift certs on a book at Media Play if I don't have any DVDs I want.

Trust me, I care about prices - my bank balance is -$30. And I brought my change jar to work to shake some change out of it for the pop machine. I's poor.

Seriously, I generally go with the rock bottom prices. And Suncoast often provides that, for the stuff I buy. And if nothing else, I have a Suncoast within 10 minutes of me at the mall. The nearest Best Buy is a 25-minute, 20 mile Freeway drive away, and the prices are worse.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, since I don't buy anime in the US and was only going by what I saw.

Anime prices in both the US and Canada have always been tricky for me. It seems like retailers large and small have so little control over what they can charge for these discs, and yet volume buying allows big box stores like Best Buy to offer somewhat lower prices on literally hundreds titles or MGM catalogue titles for as much as $5 off MSRP on a regular basis. I am aware they’ve been slowly jacking up prices, but I’ve really only seen that on titles that have been available for some time. I really don’t see what makes anime so much more precious than any other form of filmed entertainment that the wholesale and minimum retail prices need to be practically one and the same.

Incidentally, I was a replay club member for about 4 years, and I’ll tell you how I made it work for me. I couldn’t always make it across the border for the triple points weekends. Nonetheless, I redeemed about $500 worth of coupons over those years. That’s small potatoes to some folks here, but it’s still represents a not-insubstantial amount of money being spent, often at single point value, to get those coupons. When I did buy anime in the states, I was ONLY with these coupons, as 29.99 +tax for a 4-episode disc was, and still is, too high in my opinion.

Now, I gotta confess, before Best Buy had the selection they do now, I spent a lot of money at my local Suncoast at their regular prices, but EVERY TIME I knew the same title was $5 cheaper at BB, which was often, I asked if they’d match the price, which they would grudgingly since they didn’t want to lose my business (for this only, I’ll give Suncoast some kudos, although they made sure I felt like I was troubling them). If the title wasn’t at Best Buy, I’d pay Suncoast’s price.
Over the years, I’d have to say that I saved almost as much (if not AS much) money by forcing them to price-match than I actually got back in coupons. I guess I played their game and they played mine, which was fine until I was asking them to price match on so many titles (since the stuff I was buying consistently happend to be cheaper at Best Buy), that they became increasingly prickly about doing it since they were NEVER really obligated to in the first place. The more they complained, the less I bought. Eventually the card died, I didn’t renew, and now they pull the hard sell on me (since they remember me) whenever I deign to pick something up in their store, purchases which has been exclusively from the under $10 rack at the rate of about one a month, which doesn’t justify reactivating the membership.

My days of mass DVD buying are winding down, so these days I’m just looking to finish off my collection at the lowest possible price, which more often than not comes from on-line dealers (pre-orders and coupons) shipped to my US postbox than it does from the stores. Most of the time, anyways.

Sadly, I'll always think anime companies way overprice their product for what you get.

Kevin, I don't think you're a shill, I think you're just 'reasonable' and 'objectionable'.

You may be right about the selection being better at Suncoast and maybe even I have to admit that. But it still doesn't rule out the number of times I asked the local outlet to match the price at Best Buy, which was at least $5 cheaper virtually, no, every time I popped in there.

Of course, this could be the result of two factors. 1) BOTH stores have always had the titles I tend to like and 2) Best Buy had lower prices on the titles I tend to like because they are a big box store and can therefore afford to have DVDs be a loss leader.

This, of course, proves its different for everybody. For my tastes, budget and increasingly decreasing number of off-the-shelf store-bought purchases, and exclusive of the discount cards, Best Buy tends to be the best deal between the two, and the $5 cheaper factor applies far too often, though probably only in my case, for me to make too many purchases at Suncoast.

So you're absolutely right, it's tough to judge someone else's shopping habits. My habits just happen to work out for me.

It's really a shame more big studios don't try to take a bite into the anime market, or at least acquire some of the anime providers. Might drive down the price. but then, that's a whole other can of worms, I suppose.

Well, Dreamworks grabbed Millenium Actress, and Disney (blech!) grabbed Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli stuff (although I admit their dubs/subs are pretty decent).

Like I said, my stuff is cheaper at Suncoast/Media play. Period. At least on sale week. Best Buy's jerked up their anime pricing way too much. And if pricing is roughly the same, I'll support my Suncoast/Media Play over the evil Walmart Empire, or Best Buy and their sucky prices, any day, because I appreciate the customer service and selection.

As a REPLAY member for three years, I can certainly vouch for this statement.

I have also noticed that their prices are now usually within one or two dollars of Best Buy's on release day; (I think the big Looney Tunes box was actually cheaper than Best Buy's price for the people that pre-ordered that title); and they usually provide Bonus Replay Points on the big titles of the day.

As I stated in my earlier post in this thread, as long as you "play their game" you're doing OK on the prices; plus you have access to their undeniably nice "on the floor" selection. (Just remember that you should purchase those titles only on Triple Points Weekend!)

I have to say that I for one enjoy shopping there.