Tower Price Hike on Summit!

[jolynsbass]

I've been looking at getting a Summit for my birthy (just over a month away), and I recently joined the tower savers club thing, to get the $50 off special coupon. So, a few weeks ago the Summit went up from 574.99 to 579.99 - not too big a deal - that's when they started officially offering the TQi radio, new body, LVC esc, etc. A few days ago I added a green one to my shopping cart there at Tower, just to experiment with coupon codes, etc, but didn't order it. Then, just this morning I look online, and the Summit has jumped up to $594.99! What the! Distressed about this, I notice at the top of the page, it indicates the total price of items in my shopping cart - still 579.99... also interesting. So, I open it up, and indeed, the summit is still available to me for 579.99 because it was already in my cart at that price. With my wife's blessing (always mandatory for a major purchase!), I pulled the plug on it, and ordered the green one at the old price. Phew, that was close!

So, FYI, it looks like if you have merchandise in your cart, they hold on to that for you for at least several days, and you can get the old price, if it's better!

I promised my wife I'd wait until my birthday to consider myself a new Summit owner- 5 more weeks! Torture! But I'll soon be joining your ranks!

[Bearcats]

No sneaking into the closet to gander once your wife goes to bed!

[Jimmie Neutron]

The #1 reason I dislike Tower Hobbies.

[jolynsbass]

Yeah, but they can be really great with those discounts. I remember when I went to upgrade my Rustler XL-5 to a VXL, the Bandit VXL was on sale for ~200 dollars, and so I loaded some other essentials into my cart, and got some 50 or 60 dollars off of the price. I ended up with an entire vehicle for about the same price as a VXL ESC/motor combo! I traded the bandit-specific stuff (like tires/body/short arms) for a mini-lst, and had a bunch of spare parts for the next time I broke my rustler!

But the VXLs are now way pricier than they used to be. Bad economy? Inflation? I guess they come with better stuff now, like 2.4ghz radio, battery, charger, waterproof electronics, etc...

[pavmentsurfer]

I love tower. But I don't arbitrarily buy from them assuming they are the cheapest. sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. If your in the US and your a club member they are ALMOST always the cheapest when buying complete vehicle with a discount. ESPECIALLY if you spend ridiculous amounts of money there and get the GOLD member coupons. i saved $95 off the price of my summit.

[danielhr77]

If you are outside the US like me, for NIB trucks, it's the cheapest one. For parts, it's isn't.

[pavmentsurfer]

^^ agreed... Generally speaking a new truck costs $50 to ship, but you can get at least $50 off... so shipping is free basically and the base cost of the truck is usually better than any other place PLUS shipping. So still cheaper. ALWAYS cheaper than buying in canada, thats for dang sure.

[jamann]

Is there any part of this hobby/ obsession that is cheaper in Canada...lol


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[ksb51rl]

Well you could always move generally south...or we southerners could just proceed with the annexation of nine provinces and three territories. That would make shipping cheaper.
Moral: be careful what you ask for!

[pavmentsurfer]

Honestly, I'm not totally opposed to that. Not JUST for RC cost reasons either.

[krallopian]

ANYWAY...................

There are plenty of great deals to be had around my place, hobby shops all over, this can't be the only area in CANADA like this!? Internet should be taken advantage of anyway... order something from a hobby shop in Toronto, or ANYWHERE... no need to pay border taxes and all that crap, ESPECIALLY since at lunch time today the CDN dollar was stronger than the USD again.

[GraciousOne]

I have to say that the prices at the local shop here seem very reasonable. Almost same $ amount (i.e Canadian price almost equals US price) for Traxxas parts, etc. The actual vehicles may be a bit more (~10%), but that is usually offset by the price of shipping, duties, etc. if you ordered Stateside. Also, I DO believe in supporting the local shop. They helped me get back into the hobby and had lots of great advice/helpful info about the advances in technology that have taken place since I was last into it.

Don't get me wrong, it they were asking twice the price you could get Stateside, I'd say "See ya!", but that has definitely not been the case.

[Cipher_Jones]

Just bought a Slash 1/16 and didn't even think about going to my local hobby shop. Went strait to tower, no way to get it here quicker/cheaper.

I used to have one brushless shop and one other backup for tower, and I cant even remember what the second site was.

That being said almost every replacement or upgrade has been from the LHS, as you want to keep playing/racing when you are already out on your day off.

Although I cant see how tower letting you keep the old price is bad, or how the price going up the way it did is bad.