<< It's not as though the memory cost Crucial a different amount to make/advertise/distribute yesterday than today. >>
Cherub, search the forums and see if somebody has a great deal on an economics text book. Buy it and read it. Manufacturers guess at selling prices. The actual selling price is determined by the buyer, not the maker. If a product is on sale for too low a price, it sells quickly and the manufacturer raises prices accordingly. Similarly, if the market is not willing to pay a certain price, the product collects dust and the seller must drop prices to get rid of that product, even if it means selling the product for less than it cost to make. The price of RAM, like all other commodities, is based on supply and demand. The industry has the capability to make huge amounts of memory, far more than it needs in this depressed market. Hence, the prices drop as the sellers scramble to get business because supply is so much greater than demand. If nobody bought any RAM at all for the next 2 days, the price by Monday would be half what it is now simply because inventory had to be moved no matter what the manufacturing cost was.
At the time jfyeh bought RAM from Crucial, the market was willing to pay that price and did. The price adjusted downward because conditions indicated that the market was no longer willing to pay that price and instead insisted on something lower. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to make a few calls myself. I want to get a price adjustment on that RAM I bought for $40 per meg a few years ago. Oh, and that 850 meg hard drive that I paid $200 for is only worth pennies today, I should get that money back. Oh, and Dell, how could I forget Dell? That Pentium 133 system I paid $3000 for virtually worthless and I want that money back. Wahoo, I'm rich.
The reality of the situation is that on a volatile commodity like RAM, a seller offering price protection would be counter productive. They'd need to have a full time staff handling the calls and mail from whiners who paid $50 yesterday and are bitching that the RAM only costs $49.25 today. And who pays for those staff positions needed to assuage the people crying about pennies? The same people crying about the pennies. jfyeh got what he wanted at a price he was willing to pay. Capitalism is so cool.