Monster Cables, Monster Ripoff: 80% Markups

Comments

1. sudonihm says:
   February 8, 2008 at 11:40 pm

   The writer clearly has never bought a pair of pants – markup in clothing is 200% and more. 80% markup is at the low end of the scale.
2. dohtem says:
   February 9, 2008 at 12:08 am

   @philberttrw: Sorry but this self righteous act will not fly with us.
3. HeartBurnKid says:
   February 9, 2008 at 12:19 am

   @lorensingley:

   Yeah, you just bought a 10-15 dollar HDMI cable, thats great, but will it pass 1080p with 12 bit deep color support?

   Yes, it will, if it meets HDMI specs.

   Will the signal be consistent past 3-4 meters?

   This may be a sticking point with some cheap cables, but if that were the concern, then Monster probably wouldn’t sell 2m cables.
4. StevieD says:
   February 9, 2008 at 1:28 am

   OMG, somebody made a profit.

   My McD’s lunch included a softdrink. Ever checkout the profit margins on fountain drnks? Why the huge markup? Maybe it is to make up for less profitable items?

   BB/CC and every other electronics vendor, both B&M and online, have their own need to balance their loss leaders with more profitable items.

   Everybody does it.

   Hells Bells, way back when, I clerked in the hospital purchasing dept, the vendors would GIVE us the $100k piece of equipment if they could SELL us the consumable products. Wanna bet they made up the give away with the consumables?

   I bet if we really checked out MC’s product line we would find price leaders and give aways throughout the product line. MC makes up the loss leaders with healthy profits on other products.

   More power to them.

   Where do I buy some MC stock?
5. edrebber says:
   February 9, 2008 at 1:33 am

   The next time the logo shirted lying machine at one of the big box outlets tries to sell you Monster cable, request a demonstration to prove the difference. It would be pretty simple to hook up the OEM cable, view the output, hook up the Monster Cable, view the output and then make your decision.
6. edrebber says:
   February 9, 2008 at 1:34 am

   @StevieD: I always order a cup of water and then fill the cup with soda.
7. Mr. Gunn says:
   February 9, 2008 at 1:38 am

   No one’s going to read this way down here, but Ben et al, next time please put that kind of thing in a google spreadsheet or something. You can even generate HTML from it and then embed that in the body of the post if you like.
8. pionar says:
   February 9, 2008 at 3:37 am

   @GORKY:

   Trust me. I work for a retailer and trust me, there is more than $75 profit in a tv. The average profit margin in an HDTV (at least name-brand ones) is about 20%-25%. So, on a $2000 tv, you’re looking at about $400 profit.
9. pionar says:
   February 9, 2008 at 3:45 am

   @EDREBBER:

   I haven’t seen the diff between Monster and non-Monster high-end cables, but there’s definitely a difference between low-end HDMI and high-end HDMI. I work at a regional A/V store. When we put a Acoustic Research ProII HDMI (6 ft. – $95 retail and equivalent to the old Monster 400) cable up against an Entertainment Series HDMI (AR’s entry-level, $50 retail), the ProII produced significantly less digital artifacts (pixelation) than the ES cable.

   We used 2 Samsung BD players and 2 LNT5265F’s, side-by-side.
10. ariefbm says:
    February 9, 2008 at 4:03 am

    Is this new 4 you?

    This happens all the time. For example, (I shit you not) you know those tshirts they sell for 20-50 bucks? It actually costs about 5-10 bucks to make. But then again you have the shipment issues, store rent, and store staff. (Just calculate their salaries if you’re bored) (oh, and those 3 for $10 tshirts? about a buck to make)

    You want to know how people manage to distribute those stuff for 5-10 bucks? Pay minimal wages (to sell stuff at minimal profit margin). 80 bucks per month. YES, THATS RIGHT EIGHTY BUCKS PER MONTH. Suffice to say starbucks are delicacies that most people can’t afford. Everybody is in the cut throat business, so you can’t up the profit, suffice to say the places people sell is out in the street with no air conditioner.

    So tell me how many of those monster cables do you buy in 5 years? Just one? so it’s a profit of 80 dollars in five years to them?

    Keep on buying those cheap bargain stuff, and your economy will be on par with China’s economy. You will have the same salary and then these complaints will be justifiable.
11. DiZBeDaMiT says:
    February 9, 2008 at 6:04 am

    i worked in RS for a year and a half and the thing that is more sad is that none of that profit was given to its employees, we would probably see 2% profit.
12. bksteve says:
    February 9, 2008 at 7:58 am

    I almost bought a monster hdmi cable.. for like $60 bucks no less. I went home did a quick search and found the same type cable (acme brand) for $5!!!!
    The website I bought it from was http://www.monoprice.com
13. dragondorm says:
    February 9, 2008 at 4:44 pm

    @humphrmi:
    I argue that. I always try to lead customers to what they need need, not what makes me look better with my manager. I learned long ago if I do that I’ll see my customer come back over and over again and I’ll make more money in the long run.
14. dragondorm says:
    February 9, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    Buying from e-bay is fine if you don’t mind paying $12 for S&H when if you turn around and take that packaged box up to the post office to get a quote to ship to the shippers address and true shipping costs 2.98 then you can add 1-2 dollars more for the packaging. Most sellers make their money on the S&H because if you buy somthing for 10 dollars on ebay the sellers final value fees are on the $10. then they charge you $12 for S&H. E-bay gets none of that. That’s why I like to pay via paypal and that way they get stuck with more fees. I hate high S&H.
15. dragondorm says:
    February 9, 2008 at 5:29 pm

    @dragondorm: I ment ‘I can’t argue that.’
16. foxmajik says:
    February 10, 2008 at 12:11 am

    No, I never wondered.

    Learn how to use jump cuts.
17. Mr_Nowitt says:
    February 10, 2008 at 2:52 am

    I don’t see what the big deal is? Every business has mark ups. You think that’s bad, you should see markup on coffee, or food. Starbucks is at what $.15/cup of coffee and what is the average ppa? You’re soft drink at a restaurant is outrageuos comparitively to what you pay. It’s just business.
18. Keat says:
    February 10, 2008 at 6:40 am

    “It’s not true that ‘digital is digital’ and that the cable quality is consequently irrelevant.”

    The “digital is digital” phrasing is an over-simplification of the argument. Monster’s marketing claims that by using other cables, there will be a subtle loss in quality. That just does not happen with digital signals. You either get perfect quality or drastic problems.
19. Uglyshoe says:
    February 10, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    Is there a site like this for Guitar Cables… they be expensive and I have a feeling they follow the same priceing structure.
20. shenanigrams says:
    February 11, 2008 at 4:42 am

    per previous comments, the moron who wrote this needs to lose his job. retail vs wholesale? so who’s profiting on that spread. sounds like radioshack by my logic, no? that’s why radioshack is irrelevant and going the way of CompUSA and (cough) Circuit City and why cables (including Monster) are much cheaper.

    actually, it’s this sort of shoddy pseudo-journalism that is making the consumerist irrelevant. time for the consumerist to pick it up a notch and, at the VERY least, do some basic homework.

    a 12-year old would have done a better job on this.

    having said all that — the proper story (with some investigation) would probably still have revealed that monster has an 80% spread on cables — seriously, a cable from china? so radioshack customers are effectively paying a 90% to 95% mark-up on actual product-cost. are you feeling like a liz claiborne customer yet RS shoppers?

    let’s hope US shoppers gain some sense and start battering in the margins of both the Apple/Microsoft’s and Radioshacks/Best Buys by buying other things and elsewhere. your stupidity is bringing the dollar down.
21. Android8675 says:
    February 11, 2008 at 5:38 pm

    People, don’t buy it if you don’t like it. I’m sure major retailers can just raise prices on everything else to make up for the loss of accessory sales.

    Hint Hint, if you work at a major retailer (ie-not Radio Shack) you can get monster cables at “cost”. (Personal use only of course)

    @rabiddachshund: Braid them, they make a bold fashion statement among the geek-elite.
22. shadow735 says:
    February 11, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    anyone that has started a retail business knows this is normal, wholesale is marked up 100% or less. Its called a business and trying to make a profit, there are expenses accoociated with running a business.
    100% mark up is normal unless you are a huge retail business then they markup percentage decreases to encourage people to shop there rather then your local mom and pop shop.
23. xiLLeNtz says:
    February 12, 2008 at 6:19 am

    rocketfish is even higher.

    they’re 69.99CAD at canadian bb,
    staff gets them for about $10.00,
    a bit less. and that’s after taxes.
24. gover57 says:
    February 12, 2008 at 9:06 pm

    @omyard: actually the plating makes very minimal difference – it’s the make up of the while wire that would matter. copper, silver and gold conduct so closely to each other that it would be negligable to 90% of the world’s a/v electronics.

    best buy sucks too, just to make a random comment here about markup. they whined a lot when i bought my 42″ lg plasma last boxing day – had a flyer for Leons saying it was $1699.99 and Bestbuy;s price was 1899.99… they whined it was below cost, but i replied that it is their store policy to match a competitor’s price, as long as the competitor had it in stock…(leons had 14 left…lol) the manager gave us a hassle, but we still left with a tv and 5 year warrantee for less than their floor price…

    Oh, and i don’t use monster cables, just the ones shipped with the units, and the HDMI from my satellite box is just as clear in HD as it possibly could be. audio cables are generic speaker wire, and they sound perfect. my dad got rooked into monster cables and trying to bother with their short lenths in the kit was a pain to the point it wasn’t worth it. he gave up when he couldn’t squeeze the extra 2 feet he needed to get the rear surround hooked up…
25. edelRSX says:
    February 13, 2008 at 6:31 am

    true for digital, but there are varying arguments for NON digital cables… namely speaker cable, component video, guitar cables, etc. For a toslink (optical) hdmi, or digital co-ax sure maybe its a rip… but even with digital there is still the quality factor. lifetime warranties are nice, and given the fragile nature of optical cable I like that. The same goes for their guitar cables. They are considerable thicker and I noticed a CONSIDERABLE difference between that and my prior cable. for 50 dollars for a 20 ft cable I have no problem, im pluggin it into a 3K PRS and a Marshall Tube amp. I’ve tried the ‘budget cables’ and the budget 3inch and 5inch pedal cabels and they just dont last, and the connections are shoddy. they’ll cut in and out and they degrade quickly. Bought one monster cable guitar cable way back when they were introduced. it died after 4-5 years of use, went to GC with receipt and cable, they gave me a brand new one of the “newer” version without ahassle. its just about the only thing good about guitar center.

    but then again how is this any differentfrom anythign else? should we stop people from shopping at Needless Markeup I mean Neiman Markus entirely? Kill of BMW? the same goes for apple. they charge 700 for upgrade by 2gigs of laptop or desktop memory right now. odd seing as I can buy ddr2 8500 4gigs for under 200 total. Should we stop people from buying food at airports? at movie theaters? buying gas on the interstate? food at the fastfood joint at the rest stop on the highway that jacks up the prices 2x normal or more? as long as there are people stupid enough to buy the junk and think they need it, someone will be selling it to them. afterall what would yuppies do if they couldnt brag about how much money they wasted on a random insignificant piece of crap.. i sadly wouldnt be surprised if i started to see “designer” rubber bands, paper clips, batteries, plastic bags (paper, plastic or DolceGabana?), cdr’s, and garbage bags.
26. BassNotes says:
    February 13, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    Accessories have high markups. That’s not news. Monster Cables just has stupid high prices based on misleading marketing. Call it a tax on ignorance, if you like.

    If you believe that electricity travels only on the surface of a conductor, you pay a tax to Monster and the retailer for their having fooled you.

    If you believe that Monster’s high prices are because of “engineering costs,” you also pay a tax to Monster and the retailer.
27. meneye says:
    February 13, 2008 at 10:29 pm

    I don’t understand why this markup is so bad. If an item retails for 100 bucks the company will probably get it for 50 and sell it at retail. That is a standard healthy profit margin. Big deal. I work in a bookstore and I can say it’s a double markup on almost everything.
28. jazzdonkey says:
    February 14, 2008 at 10:05 pm

    Funny thing, I used to work for RadioShack at the time when they first started selling Monster Cable. So my manager and I went to a seminar informing us about the “benefits” that Monster Cable provides. One of the demonstrations focused on the tonal quality you would recieve from Monster Cable by comparing 12 gauge Monster Cable to something like 18 gauge or 22 gauge “other” speaker wire. Duh.
29. wimawep says:
    February 20, 2008 at 9:31 am

    Digital signals of any significant bandwidth are placed on an rf modulated carrier usually in the 3 or 4 megahertz range. This is why HDMI cables are relatively expensive, very good shielding must be used to prevent the modulated carriers from doing what modulated things do best ie radiate off into space. square waves were long gone, even before modulated carriers came along. @Skeptic:
30. flyboy843 says:
    February 20, 2008 at 9:05 pm

    Well after you have beat the living daylights out of the salesmen so you can pay 2 or 3 percent over cost for you plasmas, there has to be something that can make some profit to keep the goddam stores open. Waddya want, below wholesale on everything. one’s got to make a living! Jeez!
    Average out the deep dicount you got on the electronics with the attachments and you’ve still made out pretty well. friigin’ cheapskates. Don’t bother asking for any technical help as the stores can’t afford to pay anyone with any real knowledge, expertise and experience.
31. mike says:
    March 12, 2008 at 12:26 am

    But…but…Monster cables are gold plated. That makes the digital signal supercharged so that it can go into speakers and produce surround sound…

    I lost it…

    • Anonymous says:
      January 7, 2009 at 4:00 pm

      Gold plating is for two things only. It eliminates corrosion in the long run and people think it does more. The only real reason if the first. Silver is the best conductor (even tarnished silver) but with impurities in it (jewelry silver) it can sound harsh. So “but” the gold, but not the silver.
32. spaceace76 says:
    June 17, 2008 at 1:57 am

    As an RS employee, I’m a bit puzzled at this. Two reasons:

    1. We have a function in our Point of Sale system that can tell us what the margin is for every/any item in the store, just as the listing shows. However, it doesn’t organize things nicely as shown. You’d have to either find each item in the store, type in their stock numbers one by one and copy each down, or type in “monster” on radioshack.com to see a list of all the monster products and THEN type the listed stock numbers one at a time to find this info. So, this guy looked all of these items up, typed them out, and emailed it to you guys? It sounds pretty tedious to me. Also, you can only perform this extra-special function from the backroom computer, while clocked in, so you’d have to work all this out while waiting on customers.

    2. We seriously DO NOT sell this many monster products. I work in one of the largest RS’s in my district, we’re larger than most mall stores in fact, and we have maybe 50 monster products total. There are a few speaker cable rolls, lets call it 5, about 20 a/v cables of various types and lengths, we’ll call that 25 for good measure, the “iPod” cables, 3, the 2-3 FM transmitters that we get in stock on occasion, the monster screen cleaner, the monster surge protectors, 5, and the 3-4 speaker cable connectors. That’s 46 Monster products. The article lists 215?!?! No way we have that many monster products, even if you count products we don’t carry anymore that haven’t been removed from the system (there are about 20 listed in the article), there’s no way we have 215 monster products.
33. Anonymous says:
    January 7, 2009 at 3:34 pm

    Where to begin? Quality electronics (non Japanese) have dealer profits of 30% to 50% of the selling price. That is similar to or less then your clothing purchases. Monster has always been known to be mostly generic sort of quality. Other quality brand cables, when used on quality electronics produce substantially better sound then generic cables. I am not saying everyone should buy them and definitely don’t if you only listen to rock or rap (just not recorded well enough), but the improvement is there and to think not is to still believe that all CD players sound the same because they are digital. (If you think that, then go to a quality store and compare in a blind test.) Enjoy the music … and video.
34. Anonymous says:
    March 5, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    As someone who used to work for a retailer processing RTV’s (Return To Vendor) on store and customer stock, I can tell you one place where Monster cable shines is customer service. The joke around the store (10 years ago) was you can run your cable through a wood chipper on purpose and Monster would replace it, and I had seen this happen time & time again (mostly with damage from touring or by pets/pests/kids). On top of that, I have found that Monster cables that have been put through the wringer not only last longer but sound better longer.

    Also, I recently purchased some discontinued Monster cables from eBay to replace some no-name cables that didn’t do the trick. Seems there are a crapton of generic cables for S-Video/Composite/Stereo Audio cables for NGC/N64/SNES that are wired the wrong way, so you get these nasty diagonal lines all across the screen. If I had gone with Monster (the only option out there on eBay these days), I wouldn’t have paid the worthless cables + shipping experience tax.

    I’ll agree that they are overpriced (I won’t buy them new, and get 98% of my cables that I don’t make myself from the websites mentioned in the above article), and that they are in most cases no better than regular cable out of the box, but I think that quality goes a bit further than just initial performance.
35. masterasia says:
    April 8, 2009 at 3:20 pm

    I went to Best Buy once to buy a 10 foot HDMI cable about 4 years ago when HDMI just started to become main stream. The Magnolia guy told me it be $180 and they had to order them so I can pay for them now and pick them up later in the week. I laughed and said I’ll be getting it from Newegg for $10. I don’t buy much from Best Buy anymore unless I really need some DVD-R or CD-R.

    I still regret buying that 4X $240 DVD burner from them when they first came out. Two months later they were down to around $100 when the 8X came out.
36. oneinnet says:
    December 18, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    In viewing the comments this list seems full of folks who just want cheap not quality. What happens when you have a 50′ HDMI cable installed in walls after drywall and it does not function correctly. I wonder if these suppliers of Cheap Cables would pay for the repairs? Monster Would and has when I had a cable failure….
37. BjornOlafson says:
    March 31, 2010 at 8:13 pm

    The pro-audio cables from monster with 1/4″ TS connections used in musical applications are definitely worth it seeing as they usually carry analog signal. Shame they like to price gouge with HDMI and digital entertainment applications…