Wholesale and the Internet
Often on the Internet you will come across sites that claim to be offering wholesale prices directly to the public. Usually this is not the case; the vendor is likely to be doing something called drop-shipping. In this case the vendor will not actually have the product in stock; indeed they will not have any stock of any type.
What they will do is take orders from buyers over the Internet and then will pass on the orders and shipping details to a manufacturer or wholesaler. Who will ship it to the customer with the online vendor’s details on the delivery slip? The vendor, who will have been paid in advance, will settle up with the supplier at the end of the credit period, pocketing the difference between the cost price and sale price. Although the vendor is profiting from the sale, the saving to the buyer can still be significant since there is only one transport and handling fee involved. Although the base price to the vendor will still be higher than that of a true wholesale company who will buy in bulk.
Many of the vendors who sell items on Ebay are drop-shipping; a clue to look out for is the fact that they will have more than one of the items, which will also be described as new in wrapper, or words to that effect. Many of these will try to add to their profit by charging as much as they can for post and packing. Thankfully Ebay insist that postage costs have to be displayed and cannot be excessive.
In reality, only a true wholesaler will be able give you real wholesale prices and they will only accept orders of a certain quantity or above. The drop shippers are easy to weed out; if you start following an order through they will not specify a minimum amount. For fairly highly priced items like laptops or other electronic goods the quantity may be low enough that you can group together with other people that you know and be able to get the full discount. The hassle involved in this may not be worth the effort
The old adage that 'if something looks too good to be true, it probably is' holds true. What the internet is good for though is to price things on online retail shops, by doing some virtual shopping around, you will have a good idea of what the best retail price will be. Remember many of these online shops are part of a bricks and mortar shopping chain and so have real shopping power with the wholesalers. This, coupled with the low overheads of the online store should afford you the best bargain.