At the time of Pioneer's press launch for its new Kuro range of plasma TVs, the RRP list we received stated the full HD 50-inch model (PDP-LX508A) was $7499. Pioneer's Home Entertainment Group PR Manager Michael Broadhurst later told us that this was a mistake in publication with the correct price being $8499, much to the chagrin of some of our readers who saw it as an unfair price increase.
Since then however, Pioneer has decided to drop the price of the 50-inch down to $7999.
Broadhurst told SmartHouse, "With the new Full HD range being released in first week of November (stock is being sent to stores), on Monday, Pioneer management held a meeting and decided that due to where competition sat in the marketplace, we would position our new FULL HD panel at $7,999.
"At the time of the launch, there was a lot of talk around what RRP we would set for the new panels and what RRP we would expect retailers to most likely position the product for. As you know, Pioneer does not control what price retailers stock our product at, nor should we, because that is against the law.
"However, we can have an understanding of what price point we estimate the product will sit in stores at - this is just experience and a guess at that. The price on the FULL HD was simply a pricing error...Before introducing the PDP-LX508A into the Australian market, we decided on a price point of $8,499, but as of Monday, dropped this down to $7,999."
He added that since the product is yet to launch, "no consumer would suffer from paying $8,499 for the panel and now seeing it drop to $7,999."
When asked why Pioneer had not sent around a notice to the media about these pricing changes as they happened, Broadhurst said the company is sending a media statement around tomorrow, in time for the arrival of the TVs in store on Monday - all well and good, but if we had been able to publish these changes, and their reasons earlier, we might have saved our readers a forum rant or two!
So: the final correct price list follows:
1. PDP-LX608A - $11,999
2. PDP-LX508A - $7,999
3. PDP-508XDA - $5,699
4. PDP-428XDA - $4,699
See: www.pioneer.com.au
