bacon is magic

I went to the Zhongxiao Fuxing Sogo department store today to buy some point cards for the Xbox 360 and PS3 today. Why Sogo? I had about 5000NT in gift certificates to the place given to me by my company for various events like holidays and weiya(year-end company party) prizes.

I made the following wonderful observations:

• New and old 360/PS3/Wii games were about 2000NT ($67USD) on average at Sogo, going for about 1890NT at cheapest and 2200NT highest (approx.)
• New 360/PS3/Wii games are normally 1380NT at ANY GAME SHOP in Taipei, and that’s without shopping around (however, some JPN-version 360 and PSN games run 1800NT, as the Asian versions are the ones at 1380NT)
• This means that Sogo regularly marks up game prices by about 620NT on average, or about $20USD
• In other words, games at Sogo cost 44% more than normal for no good reason

I also found out that they didn’t sell the point cards at the store, and I’m pretty sure I know why: these items are pricelocked, so they can’t overcharge you for them, so they don’t sell them. Unlike the 360, PS3 cards have NT values on them, usually 400NT or 800NT(about $14/$27USD). How can you mark up the prices on something that has another price on it already?

The problem is, pretty much everything here is like this - marked way up already. Whenever there’s a sale, it rarely matters because the prices were high in the first place, and generally cost more than retail anyway even after the “sale”. After all, other stores have sales too.

Now I have 5000NT in gift certificates that I can only use to buy overpriced goods. It’s pretty irritating; I have free money, but the money is worth less than it’s supposed to be because I’m limited to spending it on excessively priced goods. Ain’t that a b.

Still, I believe that Sogo is ideal for particular groups of people:

• Stupid rich people (must be both stupid and rich)
• People who are in a pinch, such as someone who needs to buy a gift ASAP
• People looking for a very specific brand they can’t find elsewhere
• People who have gift certificates to the place already (why me?)

If you don’t fit into one of the above groups, you should really shop somewhere else.

Anyway, I’ve determined that I can only get my money’s worth for my gift certificates through one of the following ways:

• I use my gift certificates at places where the prices are less likely to be pushed up, such as at chain stores like The Body Shop or one of the restaurants in the place.
• I use my gift certificates at “new” Sogo’s City Super supermarket - the prices are always high there, but at least the stuff I buy there is of good quality and I can’t get those things elsewhere.

All of this is totally retarded too, when they sell things like this:

On the bottom shelf, you can see the Vii (hilarious breakdown examination here), also known as the Chinese knockoff of the Nintendo Wii. It boggles the mind to think that Sogo, which prides itself on being a high quality Japanese department store, sells knockoffs of the Wii instead of selling the actual Wii itself.

But wait! Sogo isn’t a Japanese store, at least not in Taiwan, where it’s owned and run by the Far Eastern Group. Going to their webpage, you can see the following quote:

The Far Eastern Group’s Founder - Mr. Y. Z. Hsu - has always taken “trustworthiness” as the guiding principle of his business management.

Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t see how products priced 44% over retail and blatant knockoff goods in lieu of the ones customers are looking for help to instill a feeling of trust.

Update: I’ve since found out that the Vii is produced by KenSingTon,(or 广州市京仕敦电子科技有限公司荣誉出品, which is Guangzhou, Beijing Shidun Electronic Technology Co. Ltd. roughly translated) which I’m guessing is trying to imitate the name of Kensington, a computer peripheral company, which does have a Chinese branch in Beijing, making me wonder how they deal with trademarks in China. The fact that the official inquiry e-mail is a Hotmail address makes them seem very sketchy. They have since come out with a redesign of the console(Google translated link), ironically making it look less like the Wii and more like a PS3. According to the Wikipedia entry, it now has a cartridge slot for 3 different multi-game cartridges (like 7-in-1 style cartridges), giving it expandability over the previous model, though I have no idea who will make the cartridges other than “KenSingTon”. My issue? Sogo is still selling the obvious Wii copycat, and the one that could be potentially mistaken for a Wii.