good service, company scam

First the good: My FX35 develloped a problem with the flash. It would not turn on. Sent the camera back to Pany, and they fixed it, no questions asked.

The bad: Panasonic now only sells cameras in Japan with Japanese menus. Fine, their choice. But at Yodobashi Camera, they had a special desplay, offerring overseas models. These apparently are exactly the same as the domestic models, except that you have a choice of menu langauges, including Japanese. I checked out the TZ5 and the new G1. The 'international models' were priced almost US$150 more than the domestic models.! Just so that you could have the menus in your own langauge. I call that a scam.
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Rube
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71881102@N00/

A scam involves fraud and/or deception. What you saw is not a scam. It is the free market at work. If anything I see it as a marketing program in Japan offering a product at a reduced price.

Olga

Except they are offering the same product at an elevated price for those who aren't fluent in written Japanese. Except for SONY all the other Japanese camera makers sell the same camera all over the world, with a choice of languages.
--
Rube
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71881102@N00/

These are most likely imports which always cost more. A lot of people think because Panasonic is a Japanese company, the products are made in Japan, that is not always the case. A lot of Panasonic products are made in China now, cameras for certain countries are made and shipped to these countries and if a Japanese store wants to sell these cameras made for other countries, they have to import them in and pay the import taxes which in turn means you pay a higher price. At least that's my understanding of it. I know on the retouching forum, Brits are always fussing about Photoshop costing so much more there than it does in the US and they like to blame Adobe, but you look at all the socialist programs the British government has to pay for and you can see that even if Adobe offered Photoshop to Brits for free, it would still cost Brits more for it than it does for an US citizen because of all the programs the government has to pay for which means high import duties and taxes. I maybe wrong about this, just how I understand it.
JD

rube39 said:

First the good: My FX35 develloped a problem with the flash. It would
not turn on. Sent the camera back to Pany, and they fixed it, no
questions asked.

The bad: Panasonic now only sells cameras in Japan with Japanese
menus. Fine, their choice. But at Yodobashi Camera, they had a
special desplay, offerring overseas models. These apparently are
exactly the same as the domestic models, except that you have a
choice of menu langauges, including Japanese. I checked out the TZ5
and the new G1. The 'international models' were priced almost US$150
more than the domestic models.! Just so that you could have the menus
in your own langauge. I call that a scam.
--
Rube
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71881102@N00/

Click to expand...

--How does the Japanese price(with all language menu) compare to the price of the same camera at home?


My opinion is just that.

The Scandinavian/British/Canadian welfare systems and their organization often means somewhat higher taxes/VAT on services and products, as this is a part of the founding of the public services. On the other hand, the wage levels tend to be higher in these countries too, so it kind of evens out..Also, many of these countries are small, or have limited domestic industries, meaning they are to a greater extent forced to import goods, meaning that almost regardless of political/economical system in those countries, prices have to be high. This because they want to keep the general value of their currency resonably low in order not to make things too expensive to sell abroad. The problem is, when you weaken your currency, things get more expensive to buy, yet, if you don't weaken it, no-one wants to buy what you have to sell and if you don't sell anything, everything grind to a halt. The matter of taxes on imported products is also related to the matter of economical protectionism, i.e. slightly disfavourable terms for imports, means most western nations, including the US, have used extensively throughout the 20th century.

Mac

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Visit my blog at http://www.mindovermadness.org

“I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.”
— Lillian Hellman

rube39 said:

Except they are offering the same product at an elevated price for
those who aren't fluent in written Japanese.

Click to expand...

So what? It's a marketing decision. It still isn't a scam.

rube39 said:

Except for SONY all the
other Japanese camera makers sell the same camera all over the
world, with a choice of languages.

Click to expand...

That's part of the free market too. Companies have a choice and they choose according to whatever marketing plan they are following. If you don't like it, you vote with your money. It's as simple as that.

Olga

It's hardly a scam - they are offering a niche product (for the Japanese market) - why would you expect that it would cost the same as the Japanese version?

You have 3 choices:
1) Buy it at the (small) mark up
2) Buy it in your home country (where it may well cost the same or more)
3) Learn to read Japanese

rube39 said:

Except they are offering the same product at an elevated price for
those who aren't fluent in written Japanese. Except for SONY all the
other Japanese camera makers sell the same camera all over the
world, with a choice of languages.
--
Rube
http://www.flickr.com/photos/71881102@N00/

Click to expand...

--
http://www.shimmerimages.co.uk

GAREB said:

These are most likely imports which always cost more. A lot of
people think because Panasonic is a Japanese company, the products
are made in Japan, that is not always the case. A lot of Panasonic
products are made in China now, cameras for certain countries are
made and shipped to these countries and if a Japanese store wants to
sell these cameras made for other countries, they have to import them
in and pay the import taxes which in turn means you pay a higher
price. At least that's my understanding of it.

Click to expand...

Sounds like a good explanation. From Panasonic's side, it's probably an attempt at market segmentation. To place the specific costs of distributing/servicing cameras on a certain market on the cameras sold there as far as possible. And also setting the price after the demand on a certain market to optimise profits.

We see other variations of this too, also from other makers, like different model names (Canon entry DSLRs, Fuji digicams, Pentax K-m/K2000D, ...) and warranties limited to where the camera was bought.

GAREB said:

I know on the
retouching forum, Brits are always fussing about Photoshop costing so
much more there than it does in the US and they like to blame Adobe,
but you look at all the socialist programs the British government has
to pay for and you can see that even if Adobe offered Photoshop to
Brits for free, it would still cost Brits more for it than it does
for an US citizen because of all the programs the government has to
pay for which means high import duties and taxes. I maybe wrong
about this, just how I understand it.

Click to expand...

I've seen comparisons to other US-made software that hasn't had nearly as high prices relative to its US price as Photoshop, so in this case, it does seem like Adobe is to blame to a large part.

Just my two oere
Erik from Sweden

I think they should do that in the USA. Maybe then the people who are to lazy to learn to speak or read English would do so.