When we started the Canon Price Watch Street Price Program in 2014, we thought it’d be simple — we’d make it easy for people to save vs. retail on brand new Canon gear (with Canon USA warranty), and eventually no one would pay full price anymore.
Five years later, we’ve had tens of thousands of successful purchases and a loyal following (thanks for all the support & reviews)! But for every supporter there are still several skeptics, and we’re still trying to bust three widely-held misconceptions about street pricing:
Myth #1: Canon Dealers can’t sell below a fixed retail price.
If you browse for a popular camera at authorized Canon dealers, you will find everyone listing the camera for the same price. Also, discounts or promotions are applied universally across all dealers. It would be easy to assume that Canon dealers are only permitted to sell at a fixed price, but this is not the case.
In 2014, Canon introduced a strict Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policy, which forbids retailers from advertising lower prices. Dealers can still sell a camera or lens for any price they choose, but they are just not permitted to tell you about it!
We know of three ways to get a deal better than MAP. The first way is to leverage bundles — dealers can’t discount, but they can bundle free goods with a camera or lens, such as batteries, memory cards, filters, or sometimes even printers. If these free items are useful to you, you can get a good deal. The second way is to negotiate with a dealer — some may be willing to give an unadvertised discount. The final way is to leverage a program such as the CPW street price program, which has pre-negotiated low prices on many popular Canon cameras and lenses. Like a group buy, because we’re able to provide a large volume of purchases, the dealers are more than happy to sell at a discounted price.
Myth #2: If the price is too low, it’s too good to be true.
We are often asked — “What’s the catch with your street prices? They’re too good to be true. Are they grey market, or open box, or customer returns, or stolen goods?” There’s no catch! These are brand new items from reputable authorized Canon dealers with a normal Canon USA warranty, but at a discount.
Note that not every price you see out there on the Internet is legit — beware a number of bait and switch retailers who will list a very low price, but then call you to upsell to a “USA model”.
If the dealer you’re working with is a Canon authorized dealer, you can take that as an assurance from Canon that they are legitimate. We additionally screen the authorized dealers we work with for our street price program, as we never recommend a store that we ourselves wouldn’t shop at.
Most Canon dealers don’t bother with trying to resell customer returns. They simply send them back to Canon, where they eventually show up in the refurbished Canon store.
Myth #3: You get what you pay for — a low price means bad service.
The first part is true — you do get what you pay for. At a brick-and-mortar retail camera store, you’re paying for the rent, the salespeople, the classes, the demo cameras, and the advertising that brought you into the store. If these are important to you (many photographers cite the expert salespeople and classes as huge draws to local stores), please support your local stores and continue buying gear there.
Dealers who discount from MAP save money because most of their sales go through an online sales channel which is more cost-effective than a physical store. We don’t skimp on service though — with real people (and real photographers) answering emails and phones, and dealing with both pre- and post-purchase support, both at the dealer and with us at CPW street price.
Dealers are happy to sell at a discounted price to street price customers, but still provide full retail service — this is because street price customers are their favorite type of customer to deal with: very knowledgable about the gear, and less likely to “try-and-return”. It’s a win-win.
What can you do?
We believe strongly that consumers should have the choice of how to spend their money. Whether it’s full-price retail, discounted street price, or discounted channels such as refurbished or grey market, we’re happy when consumers can make an informed choice. Next time you’re looking for a Canon item, we’re more than happy to help you find deals from authorized Canon dealers, via our street price program.
You can also help us on our myth-busting mission — next time you see one of these myths on a forum or on social media, please teach them how to save! Or just link them to this post.
