"Below cost" doesn't really
mean much though, depends on how they determine cost.
The manufacturer knows what it costs them to make it.
They could easily liquidate excess stock in bulk at a lower than
normal cost, just to be rid of the items in one transaction
and still wish to preserve their regular profit margin on
further sales... which is another reason to sell one large
lot, so it doesn't look like 50% of buyers in same location
are getting a different price than the rest, the stock is
diverted to another channel.
In this case that was not what had happened. The product is still
available at retail. The date code on the unit I got was quite recent
too - just a few months old.
How can you know for certain what it cost to make it?
I aksed the product line manager and was told that my price was "well
below" the actual cost to manufacture the unit. But that is far as I
got because the company must have had a policy of "need to know" and I
was not included.
But, you are also buying off ebay... which is a higher risk
still.
Actually that is the only sensitive item I have ever bought on Ebay,
and then only because the price was so attractive and I watched the
guy sell one per auction cycle and no one complained. He answered all
my questions truthfully and even agreed with my Zero Tolerance Mail
Order Policy, which is backed up wth the promise of charging back to
my credit card if I am not 100% satisfied. I have had to do that on a
couple other occasions (not Ebay) and believe me it makes things
happen very quickly.
I don't mind paying a few bucks more for some things like a thermostat
This was not a thermostat - I can get one of those at the local
stores. This is a special design thermidistat - combination thermostat
and dehumidistat. If you set it up properly it can regulate on the dew
point, which is what determines comfort in a hot high-humidity
environment. Keeping careful records of actual run time I figure I
save at least $300 per hot season and I make no sacrifice on comfort.
The reason is because conventional thermostats waste electricity. For
example, a conventional thermostat will run the air conditioner for 8
hours when 6 hours is sufficient to produce a comfortable environment.
It will be warmer inside but it will still be comfortable. All it
takes is to run the unit for a few minutes less each cycle and the
savings add up. But that won't happen with a conventional thermostat
and still maintain comfort. You have to regulate on humidity with
temperature acting as a lower limit so it won't run away.
though I still have the old one in the
basement as a backup if the newer one fails... newer being
all electronic, substantially more failure points so I'll
just keep the old mechanical as a backup.
You can use a conventional thermostat if you live in a normal humidity
environment, but if you live in a subtropical environment like
Houston, you need to control humidity. Before I got the thermidistat I
rigged a combination electronic thermostat and mechanical dehumidistat
and they worked if the sensible heat was the same. However I had to
shift the setpoints manually twice a day to accomodate the difference
in sensible heat for day versus night.
That's when I decided to get the thermidistat because it has a
mechanism internally to deal with sensible heat differences - but only
if you set it up properly. All this is undocumented so you have to
understand how it all works together to pull it off. The trick is to
set it up for short cycles and take advantage of the internal limit of
4 cycles per hour. That let's you cool to comfort using humidity as
the variable without wasting overcooling which is what wastes
electricity.
If I had the interest and the equipment I would implement all this in
the computer but it is not easy to come by the right instrumentation
economically, so I rely on the thermidistat to do the job.
Measurements of the run time indicate that I have pretty much squeezed
the best I can out of the situation. As little as 1F higher setpoint
results in an uncomfortable environment and only saves about 1/2 hour
runtime per day. So I feel confident I am about as close as I can get
to the best tradeoff between runtime and comfort.
In case you are wondering why I go to all this trouble, my a/c
consumes 5 KW and electricity costs about 14 cents - and that's with
one of the deregulated resellers - the lowest price I can find. So if
I save 2 hours per day runtime, that's $1.50 per day which is $45 per
month or about $300 per 6 1/2 month hot season. The thermidistat cost
me $98 including shipping and I have used it for two seasons, so you
can see how much I have saved and not sacrificed one bit of comfort. I
never liked it so cold anyway - just dry.
