I had the Drow War on my AdventureWishlist, and while searching the web for reviews, I noticed that Infinity Games UK sold volume two and three at a considerable discount:
||The Drow War I - The Gathering Storm||£22.49|| ||:--:||:--:|| ||The Drow War II - The Dying Light||£9.89|| ||The Drow War III - The Darkest Hour||£9.89|| ||Postage and Packaging (Royal Mail AirMail)||£13.00|| ||Total||**£55.27**|| ||||CHF 133||
The shop in Germany would have asked for a lot more:
||Saga of Drow 1: Coming Storm||€34.95|| ||:--:||:--:|| ||Saga of the Drow 2: Dying Light||€35.00|| ||Saga of the Drow3: Shatter Realms||€35.00|| ||Postage and Packaging||–|| ||Total||**€104.95**|| ||||CHF 172||
I looked around a bit, got my confirmation emails, returned to the British shop, and tried to look at my “Cart” again, and this is what I saw:
||The Drow War Book 1 (Campaign)||£22.49|| ||:--:||:--:|| ||The Dying Light - Drow War Volume 2: D20 Campaign||£23.49|| ||The Darkest Hour - Saga of the Drow Book 3: d20 Campaign||£23.69|| ||Postage and Packaging (Royal Mail AirMail)||£13.00|| ||Total||**£82.67**|| ||||CHF 199||
Wow! What a difference: Up to £82.67 from £55.27! Well, more than £80 is what I would have expected from a shop in the UK. They are usually far more expensive than similar shops in Germany.
The truly astonishing thing is the sudden price change, though. It seems as if my buying of volumes two and three returned their prices to normal. I feel like booking flights via the Internet with small numbers of cheap seats and prices going up as more and more seats are sold...
Do you remember the early days of Amazon? I think they had a system where first-time customers were offered better rates. Maybe this is the same kind of system?
We live in a strange world.
Since these three books are quite heavy, and the value of the package is such that 7.6% sales tax exceeds CHF 5, I will have to pay sales tax when I pick it up at the post office, and pay an additional CHF 10 for this “service” (instead of requiring me to travel to the nearest customs office I guess). I’m therefore assuming that I’ll have to pay an extra CHF 20 when I pick the books up. It’s still cheaper than buying them in Germany.
Perhaps there is no good D&D {FLGS Friendly Local Game Shop} in Zürich because they’re all losing to the Internet. (Although many of the D&D books by smaller companies are not available via Amazon.)
||Drow War Trilogy Bundle Deal||$75.00|| ||:--:||:--:|| ||Delivery||$18.00|| ||Total||**$93.00**|| ||||CHF 113||
Argh! 😄
I feel dirty and greedy. 🙁
I ordered the Drow War Trilogy Bundle Deal from Mongoose directly.
The Internet is a strange place. The other day somebody reported an Oddmuse bug. I was at work in Switzerland, logged into a server in Germany , made some changes to the code, checked it into {CVS Concurrent Versioning System} (hosted in the US), logged into another server in the US, updated my working copy, and installed it. All of this without getting up.
And now I’m looking for a book in the US, checking for offers in Switzerland, Germany, the UK, and the publisher in the US.
#RPG #Books #Publishing