Ok i actually managed to get a reply from the office of fair trading in the Uk about the £160 price point for the Voltric 80. The e-mail said that they had looked into the pricing and that it did not consider Yonex to be fixing the price. They mentioned something about price maintenance, but that price fixing was not going on. They also stated that they would keep an eye on Yonex prices in the future.
The result is that all of us in the UK will still have to pay £160 for the voltric 80, and no doubt for any of the future Yonex rackets that come out. This sucks big time in my eyes, and there is nothing that can be done about it i'm afraid. All the online retailers can do nothing about it either, and i am sure they would love to sell at a lower price. Yonex have tied their hands and the badminton players suffer for it.
Rest assured that when the latest top end racket does come out, the prices will all be the same, and i will send off another e-mail to the OFT and see what happens. Understand that it is not just yonex who do this sort of thing. All of the big name players in the racket industry do this. The same thing happens in the tennis racket world with Head and Wilson, and no doubt Yonex as well, as they sell quite a few tennis rackets. Funnily enough yonex do not manufacture squash rackets yet. This has always baffled me, as there is a pretty large market for squash rackets in Europe especially.
I think i will send an e-mail to the guy who owns the racket doctor website and store, and see how far he got with the price fixing in the USA, i am sure he will know much more than i do at the moment. This practise is legal in the USA, and it looks to be same story in the UK now as well.
Monday 27 June 2011
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