EOFY Sales, are they worth it?
There’s just a handful of days left until the EOFY (end of financial year) which brings us huge deals and big promotions on camera gear of all kinds but the real question is, are those deals even that good? It really depends on what you want and what you expect. In camera land a discount of more than 15-20% of RRP is considered excellent; we don’t really get 50% off sales unless there is something seriously wrong with the product… like it’s being discontinued or is super old. The ones I do encourage you to be wary of are the deals where you get a bonus gift card or a bonus lens.
It’s easy to see this as an amazing deal but the gift cards are often only $100, which even if you spend $1000 on a camera it’s only 10% of the value and the maths gets far worse as you go up in price.
Free lenses can also seem like great value but only if it’s a lens you were going to buy anyway. Even then, there will often be a flood of that lens on the market (especially unopened second hand) within weeks of the sale. This happened years ago with Olympus’ 45mm lens. They gave it away free with a ton of cameras and people factored in the RRP of $499 into the ‘discount’, within a week of the sale going live the lens could be purchased brand new for less than $250 as there were tons of people flogging them off. Suddenly it’s not a great deal.
Best thing to do in my opinion? Get in touch with Nigel at Croydon Camera House (+613 9725 3816) and tell him you read about the shop in this email, they will always try to look after you with the best possible deal (even more so if you’re associated with my workshops).