How Much Is What You Buy Really Worth?
A while ago, I decided it might finally be time to replace the remote controls for my garage door.
They're more than ten years old.
They've been dropped a respectable number of times, suffered their fair share of abuse, and been patched up here and there whenever necessary.
In short, they still work.
But they've had a life.
My first instinct was simply to check how much a replacement remote would cost from the reseller.
I found the model.
€60 each.
Ah.
But apparently I was in luck: they were on sale.
€50 each.
Shipping not included.
I'm not exactly sure how much I expected to pay for a remote control, but €50 for a small plastic box containing a handful of electronic components instinctively felt a little expensive.
And this isn't some particularly exotic device either.
It's a radio remote using a rolling-code system with encryption, designed among other things to prevent someone from simply recording the signal and replaying it later.
A little more sophisticated than a basic fixed-code remote, then, but hardly alien technology.
Surely I could find it somewhere else.
€60, €20...
Another search.
I found exactly the same model on Amazon.
€20 each.
That already sounded considerably more reasonable.
And I could perfectly well have stopped there.
After all, I'd just gone from €50 on sale to €20.
Problem solved.
Except that the seller was Chinese.
Which raised a small question:
if a Chinese seller can sell me this remote for €20 on Amazon, can I find it directly on AliExpress?
Another search.
Yes.
Same appearance.
Same remote.
Except this time:
around €20... for three.
Shipping included.
Right.
At that point, this wasn't really about saving a few euros anymore.
I mostly wanted to know what I would actually receive.
Because, obviously, there was always the possibility that this was simply a cheap copy made to look very much like the original.
For around twenty euros, the experiment seemed worth it.
Order placed.
A Few Weeks Later...
A postal strike helped extend the experiment slightly, but eventually the package arrived.
Three remote controls.
First surprise: the packaging looked identical to the original packaging.
At least as far as I could remember more than ten years later.
I opened one of the boxes.
I put the new remote next to the old one.
Same casing.
Same buttons.
Same metal flap.
Same overall appearance.
I started looking for differences.
I found three.
The new remote had a removable protective film that I don't remember ever seeing on the originals.
Under that film, the metal flap had a small laser engraving with the seller's name.
And on the back was a small sticker listing the remote's specifications, something that wasn't present on my old remotes.
That's about it.
Externally, the two were practically identical.
There was, of course, one fairly important detail left.
Would it actually work?
Thirty Seconds
I started the pairing procedure with the garage door opener.
Thirty seconds later, the new remote was controlling the garage door perfectly.
Well.
That's not entirely true.
You have to add the time it took me to find the pairing procedure online, because obviously I had forgotten it sometime during the previous decade.
But once I'd found the instructions:
thirty seconds.
First remote paired.
I picked up the second.
Same result.
Then the third.
Same result.
All three worked perfectly.
It's Not Just a Box That Looks Right
There's an important detail here.
This remote doesn't simply transmit a fixed radio code that the receiver recognizes.
It uses a rolling-code mechanism with encryption.
The whole point of this kind of system is to prevent someone from simply recording a radio transmission and replaying it later.
Making a piece of plastic that looks exactly like the original remote is one thing.
Making a remote that the receiver accepts through its normal pairing procedure and that subsequently communicates with it using the expected protocol is something else entirely.
Without taking both versions apart and analysing them, I obviously can't claim that they use exactly the same PCB, components or firmware.
Nor can I prove that they came from the same factory.
But what I have in front of me are remotes that are physically almost indistinguishable from the originals, came in apparently identical packaging, pair using the normal procedure and work with the same system.
The only visible differences are essentially a commercial engraving and an identification sticker.
Let's just say my concerns about compatibility had pretty much disappeared by then.
So Who Makes What?
And this is where the whole little story started leaving me with a slightly strange feeling.
The obvious reaction would be to look at the two prices:
€60 each at the normal retail price.
Versus roughly:
€20 for three, including shipping.
And conclude that somebody in the middle must be making an absolutely enormous margin.
Except that would be a little too easy.
A local reseller obviously can't sell a product at the same price at which I can buy it directly from China.
They have to import and stock products.
They have employees.
Premises.
Taxes.
Warranty obligations.
Unsold inventory.
Administrative costs.
They may provide advice and support.
And one small detail that tends to get forgotten whenever people talk about retail margins:
they also have to make money.
I have absolutely no problem with that.
In fact, I'm perfectly happy to pay more for something bought locally when that extra cost gives me something in return.
Immediate availability.
Advice.
Support.
An easier warranty process.
Or simply the certainty that I'm buying the right product without spending half an hour searching for it.
All of that has value.
The real question is:
how much?
Maybe the Expensive Purchases Aren't the Ones We Need to Watch Most Closely
And ultimately, that's probably what interests me most about this story.
If I'm about to buy something costing €1,000 or €2,000, I'm going to compare prices.
Probably quite a lot.
I'll check several sellers, read reviews, look at alternatives and try to understand why one model costs €300 more than another.
A large price difference almost automatically triggers some research.
But a €50 remote control?
The reaction is much more likely to be:
“Bloody hell... that's expensive for what it is.”
And then we order it.
Because we need it.
Because we know it's compatible.
And because €50 is expensive enough to potentially generate a rather interesting margin...
but perhaps not expensive enough for us to spend much time questioning it.
And I don't think this applies only to garage door remotes.
Accessories.
Consumables.
Adapters.
Cables.
Certain spare parts.
Filters.
Small components.
All those relatively mundane things we occasionally buy where the price remains below our personal:
“Hang on a minute, I'm going to compare this.”
threshold.
Maybe those are precisely the purchases where we should occasionally do exactly that.
€180 or €20
In my case, replacing all three remotes at the reseller's normal price would have cost:
€180, excluding shipping.
Even with the promotion:
€150, excluding shipping.
What I eventually paid was roughly:
€20, delivered.
For three remotes that paired normally and, so far, do exactly what I expect them to do.
That does not mean the difference between €20 and €180 is the reseller's profit.
I don't know their purchase price, their supply chain or their costs.
Claiming otherwise would therefore be dishonest.
But it does give me one rather interesting piece of information:
the price I'm being asked to pay for an object isn't necessarily a very good indication of what that object is actually worth.
So, Buy Everything on AliExpress?
No.
That would probably be the worst possible conclusion to draw from this story.
There are very good reasons to buy certain products from a local or specialised reseller.
And there are equally good reasons not to buy certain products from the cheapest seller on a marketplace halfway around the world.
Safety, compliance, actual quality, warranty, or simply the consequences of a failure can completely change the equation.
I'm certainly not going to apply my garage-remote reasoning to every electrical device or piece of safety equipment simply because something that looks similar costs four times less somewhere else.
But the opposite is also true.
Buying from the usual reseller perhaps shouldn't stop us from asking what we're actually buying.
And, more importantly, what we're willing to pay for the services surrounding the object itself.
Five Minutes
The funny thing is that I could perfectly well have stopped at Amazon.
Remote at €60.
On sale at €50.
Same model at €20.
I'd already found a bargain.
It took just one additional search to discover that €20 could actually buy three of them.
So the moral of this story isn't:
“Buy everything directly from China.”
It's more along the lines of:
“Before reaching for your credit card, occasionally spend five minutes looking at what you're actually buying.”
Especially with those small, mundane objects that don't normally seem worth the effort of comparing.
Because those five minutes might save you a few euros.
Or nothing at all.
But sometimes...
they can turn a €180 bill into a €20 one.
And at that price, I'll always have enough left over to fund one or two other perfectly indispensable ideas.
Comments
No comments yet.
Add a comment