The circus comes to town..but it never really left – Redux

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“…and somewhere at Cheaper Than Dirt headquarters, they are readying the pricing algorithms on the website for $100 Pmags.”

CTD is notorious for used GI aluminum mags for $100 each during the last panic, PMAGs weren’t far behind.

Well, not yet. CTD still seems to have AR mags at ‘normal’ prices listed on their website. I suspect that they’ve simply not gotten around to jacking ’em up by several hundred percent yet because it’s a weekend.

I give CTD a ration of crap because they really should have had a much more long-term outlook on what this sort of thing would do to them. But maybe they did…they are still in business after all, and it seems theres no shortage of customers for their wares.

How does a $99 PMAG happen?  Actually, its pretty simple. As the supply of inventory dwindles, the software keeps raising the price to slow down the sales so they never go out of stock. This normally works because most items are a) replaced in inventory fairly quickly and b) most items aren’t suddenly flying off the shelves like they’re free gold bars.  So, a couple hundred thousand people hit the website looking for PMAGs and maybe CTD has a few thousand in stock. The things are flying off the shelf at a furious clip (heh,,see what I did there?) and any potential resupply is an unknown. So, with no anticipated restock date, a limited inventory, a metric buttload of customers, and a software-driven mandate to not let things get out of stock….the price automatically goes up to apply the brakes. But demand is so high that the software has to stand on those brakes like a pilot landing on a tennis court. Result? Price changes that keep going up, up, up. And finally someone at CTD takes a moment from checking their Facebook account to see that social media is excoriating CTD and someone runs into the IT department and says “Fix this!”

But CTD should have dropped human intervention in there long before people screencapped the outrageous prices and saved them for posterity.

I’ve been to this dance before.

19 thoughts on “The circus comes to town..but it never really left – Redux”

    • For the same reason people think “Oh, Trump won the election. I don’thave to worry about gun stuff for four years.”…because theyre short-sighted idiots.

  2. CTD (Cheat Them Daily) is dead to me after that crap. They used to have a retail store in McKinney, TX. Not far from where I live. I even bought my first AR lower from them in 2011.

    After their scumminess came out I would forever flip them the bird every time I drove past their store. Screw them. A pox on their crotches.

    • PM, that store was literally the worst store front of any chain I have ever been to. You know you are in the wrong store when the employees piss you off with their stupidity.

      • That is very true. I was dismayed at the laziness of their staff too.

        Just for old time’s sake I’m going to flip their old store the bird next time I pass by.

  4. I got a laugh out of the fact that Mexico is threatening to sue the USA because 3 Mexican nationals were killed at that Wal-Mart…Cartels have slaughtered people for years while the Mexican gov has looked the other way…bye bye 5.56…I will remember the glory years…

  5. Looks like the count of Mexican nationals is up to 6…the story I read yesterday said 3…

  6. I have not purchased anything from CTD when they screwed everyone the first time. To hell with them and Dicks, they’re all POS businesses that will suffer!!

  7. Just last month, Primary Arms had an awesome sale on PMag 20, $13.99 ea. Never seen ’em that low before. So of course I passed. Today, I was finding a lot of places were out of stock and came nowhere near that price. Brownells had the best price at $169.99 for a 10 pack, so 20 it was! If you have an FFL of some sort, Brownells will throw you some good deals. I have a C&R. Easy to get, no real paperwork if you’re not buying C&R guns, $25 for 3 years.

    • That right there. Brownell’s still honors my long expired C&R for discounted pricing.

      I stopped buying at Midway when they took away the FFL discounts.

  8. On a site that advertises on several survival/prepper sites had a 10 pack on P-mag gen 3 for $99 at 7 am….then at 1:30pm they were $119.00…….I’m very happy I don’t need to purchase any…..

    • I learned my lesson after Sandy Hook. I have plenty of mags for all of my rifles. Many of my pistols too.

      And thanks to the Gods (both old and new) I have more than enough supplies to reload more ammo than I can carry.

  9. It’s stuff like this that makes it a lot easier to spend the bucks on a good 3D printer and make your own. That way you will never get caught up in this nonsense again.

  11. Don’t expect to ever need more mags for a lifetime for everything I have that uses one… That is all…

    Regards

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