back to article Floods really will bring armageddon in 2012, insist resellers

PC shortages are affecting the UK earlier than expected but the rapid swing from inventory overload to relative hardware famine has led to some customers dismissing resellers' warnings as sales opportunism. The channel has been awash with stock all year as consumer demand fell off a cliff. However PC makers forecast shortages …

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  1. Steve Foster
    FAIL

    No comment from Chicken Little?

    Maybe the cynicism reflects the IT industry's actions after previous disasters, when Chicken Little was repeatedly heard to say "The sky is falling".

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Doesn't help that prices trippled within a week of the floods actually happening. Run out in a week? Somehow I doubt it.

  3. I Like Heckling Silver badge
    FAIL

    I started seeing the price gouging start almost immediately, online retailers pushed the prices up immediately the news started suggesting shortages.

    One website was showing existing stock of hundreds of units, and still jacked the prices from around £75 to £125 for a 2TB drive... just another reason why I never use this particular buyer of e.

    Another retailer that I use that rhymes with 'barrier' did exactly the same thing at the same time as the others.

    They saw an opportunity to jack up prices and get more profit from their existing stock before buying in at higher prices.

    Thankfully I won't be needing to expand my storage any time in the next 4-6 months, by which time prices should be back to normal.

    The fail icon... for all those retailers who are price gouging opportunistic scumbags.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Profiteering

    If it's not profiteering then how come I can buy a external drive for £100 that if I remove the bare drive inside that would cost £200?

    Simple, the demand is for bare drives, not externals. So as of last week most places hadn't bothered to increase the prices of external drives that much but bare drives have doubled.

    All smoke and mirrors. Prices go up quickly but will be very slow to come down again.

  5. Amorpheus

    Don't forget to omit your own company's hike in prices

    Dave Wood should really look at the price fluctuations of his own company before commenting on others.

    "Dave Wood reckoned tier-one brands have already pushed up prices by 15 to 20 per cent so far "

    I purchased some 750GB hard drives from his company at £27 per unit in mid october. When I looked to get a couple more of the same item last week, they were priced at £125 per unit, or about 360% more than last month

    When I looked again two days later £40 had been cut from the price and is currently holding at £85 level, but that is still 214% above the level last month. All this without an apparent change to the reported stock levels.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Don't forget to omit your own company's hike in prices

      Similar here, I bought 6 2TB Hitachi disks back in August for £55 each. Last week the cheapest 2TB was £180, today it's £135? Does that mean supply is getting better now?!?

      I think Dave either missed off a '2' from the front of his 20 - 30% price rise statement or he's decided to extort his customers out of cash on the back of the disaster.

    2. 0laf
      FAIL

      And

      No doubt marketed as a 30% discount offer.

      I was going to build a new PC in the new year but if drives and other hardware are inflated 3x I'll just hang off and buy nothing.

  6. BristolBachelor Gold badge
    Joke

    "...BT Engage IT, told El Reg that the product shortfall was now impacting availability and driving up prices in the UK."

    Can BT IT really increase their prices? How many accounting/ordering systems work with trillion pounds per item?

  7. Simbu
    WTF?

    How the hell...

    Does 'Dave' from Ebuyer explain that a 20% (worst case) increase in prices equates to the Samsung F4 2TB drives i bought for £70 a few months ago now costing £180?

    Money-grabbing parasites.

    1. JC 2

      @ How the hell

      Simple. He's equating that if the price of one part (HDD) of a whole PC goes up 200% or more, then the price of the whole PC goes up a lesser amount since the whole costs less than any one of the components in it.

      There is a bright side for some customers, memory prices continue to stagnate with more and more surplus building up. Soon it might be a good time to buy anything BUT a HDD.

  8. Craig Foster
    Devil

    WD Green 2TB went from $79 AUD three weeks ago, to $139 two weeks ago, and $179 AUD 9 days ago. (It's $189 AUD at the moment...)

    20% my ass!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    "Floods really will bring Armageddon in 2012, insist resellers"

    ...selling arks.

    There, fixed it for you.

  10. LarsG

    IT IS SO SIMPLE

    Reuse what u have for the time being, let the floods recede, let the glut build and after 6 months they will be begging u offers to buy them. Sod the opportunistic w*****s make them suffer.

  11. HamsterNet
    Happy

    SSD time

    So its now cheaper to get a 120GB SSD than a 1TB HDD?? OK not as much storage, but with the price of everything else bottoming its a good system building time :) just reuse the old storage.

  12. mark l 2 Silver badge

    Ebay isn't much better, I bought a 2.5" hard drive back in September and went to buy another at the weekend and the prices have almost doubled.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't buy any cameras for xmass

    Also stop recording video, set your resolution to <3M pixels and skip RAW

    How are they going to fund the rebuilding if the financial system is so fcked up?

    Can they survive the cash flow problems?

    Going forward over the next 3~5 years HDD prices will be pretty firm

    Buy WORM DVD/Bluray media makers stock

    Any bonds issued {by the HDD manf.} I would recommend a buy,

  14. Maryland, USA
    Thumb Up

    Literally well-done

    What a pleasure to see "literally" used correctly:

    "PC makers forecast shortages nearer to Christmas as the deadly flooding disaster in Thailand literally wrecked the hard disk supply chain.

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