The Kindle is still sold out on Amazon so where can you go to buy one? eBay and Craigslist, of course. I was poking around on Craigslist this morning and noticed some interesting pricing tendencies...
If you look in my home state of Indiana, you'll find people selling Kindles on Craigslist for $300-$400. That sounds fairly reasonable given the current situation. If you head out to the San Francisco area you'll find more of them available but the typical price goes up to $400-$500. But if you go to the home of the Kindle, Seattle, you'll see more up around $500 and even $600 (with a leather messenger bag).
Funny how the same device is valued at a higher resale price in the more expensive regions of the country. If I were in the market I'd head straight to the Craigslist site for Mississippi and have it shipped to me. Bad example...if you search for "Kindle" in the Gulfport/Biloxi area of Craigslist you come up empty...insert your own joke here... You get the point though.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Kindles on Craigslist
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
One thing to watch for on Craigslist: there were several national ads repeated in many cities at the same price (or nearly the same). The ones in the $200-$250 range all appeared to be the same website. I'd be very suspicious at that price of not getting one at all, getting a stolen or broken one or having my credit card info stolen. I also saw one cheap in SF -- but the guy claimed he had purchased it and could no longer afford it, so was selling at below cost. If it were a true story, he'd return it to Amazon and get a full refund, so it's either one purchased on a stolen credit card or a completely stolen unit (perhaps not even new). As always, buyer beware, but perhaps more so on Craigslist than on eBay (where you have some minimal purchase protection).
Any Kindle that is truly new in the box can be returned to Amazon by the seller with pretty much no risk of monetary loss. The only exception are those won by audience members on Oprah (all opened, so not "new") and Ellen. I'd be deeply suspicious of any listings for ultra low prices (if sold on Amazon, for example, the seller pays 15% if it sells, about $75 on a $500 sale or $50 on $400 - after shipping, that lower priced unit won't even break even, unless it really is an old, unreturnable Kindle). Fees are less on Craigslist, but they are still a factor in pricing.
Post a Comment