January 12, 2000
by Stephen Hildreth
Editor-in-Chief

Sometimes it seems that a PowerBook price is too good to be true, perhaps a few hundred dollars cheaper than anything else you've seen. Although this is a darn crappy way to list prices, many vendors advertise their machines with prices that are 'cash discounted by X%.' The 'X' is commonly 2-5%. This means that if you pay for the PowerBook with a credit card (and you should), you'll be charged 2-5% more than the advertised price. This is called cash discounting, and it's not always apparent on a vendor's website.

For example, Infinity-Micro states at the bottom of each page that "ALL PRICES SHOWN ARE CASH / LEASE DISCOUNTED. ANY OTHER PAYMENT TYPES WILL RECEIVE OUR REGULAR PRICES," although they don't tell you the percentage. L. A. Computer Center, however, doesn't tell you this at all until you put a PowerBook into their shopping cart, at which point, down at the bottom of the page, they state that "All Prices reflect a 3% Cash Discount." Compu-America also holds back until you're ready to checkout, at which point you have the choice of payment methods. If you wish to pay by credit card, they tell you that "An additional 3% credit card processing charge will be added to your order." Compu-D states on their main page that "Prices reflect a 3% Cash Discount," but not anywhere else on the site until you get most of the way through the checkout process.

PowerBook Central doesn't endorse this type of advertising, since you should rarely, if ever, purchase a PowerBook using cash. In fact, we think it's borderline deceptive, especially when a cash discounted statement is not plainly visible on the same page as the prices. When we post prices on this site, we always try to tell you if they are cash discounted, and none of the resellers on our price trackers use cash discounting - we wouldn't include them on the trackers if they did.

As always, buyer beware.

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