Search Parties Have Been Organised

And party hats and balloons have been ordered. There will be ice-cream cake.

Finding things is dead easy. All you have to do is go where they are and...there they are. This is the principle of finding lost socks and references to obscure camera equipment. Just go to the website with the name of the thing you need and there you'll find it.

Or not, as the case may be. " I saw it on a website..." is frequently heard - twinned with " I found El Dorado and have a garage full of gold nuggets...". We are at liberty to believe this as much as we like. As it is a statement frequently given to lower the price of consumer goods, a certain amount of skepticism is inevitable.

Those of us who regularly receive fyshing emails and scam notifications on our email pages  wait a little before we go along with this sort of thing. If a website promising discounts or nuggets is out there, it is reasonable to think that it is there to be seen by all - if no approach to it yields any result despite all the clues and keywords we type into the browser, we are again at liberty to adjust our level of belief...

As the REB of the BGA I find I can also imagine a number of scenaria that might see fake sites made up to force price-matching or discounting amongst panicky retailers. I have made far too many parody magazine covers myself - for amusement rather than profit. Anything is possible.

So - what should you do if you have found that offer that is too good to refuse on the net - and want to bring it to a local retailer to force them to match it? How do you react? Be very careful to check the bona fides of the site - the address and the characteristics of the page. If it does not say where it is from, it is from nowhere, and deserves to be returned promptly. If it is from nl or pl or ng or hk exercise extreme caution in pursuing it...

Will the shop respond to every other shop? Not if the other shop is not a shop. Or not a shop that can legitimately deal in with a particular brand name. Some manufacturers maintain a list of genuine dealers and these can be matched. Otherwise it is smoke and mirrors and flashy promises. Good for David Copperfield but poor for business.

Remember - no-one can legitimately fix prices any more. The marketplace rules - but shopkeepers are not obliged to accept a swift kick in the leg as an alternative to a fair price.