Canadian customers seem to be hit hard by this. We didn't have too much to choose from to begin with, now even less. Not that Onvia.ca was anything special, far from it IMO (terrible inventory system, lot of products out of stock, slow to update prices after price cuts; e.g. CPUs, video cards), but they were one of the bigger e-commerce sites available for Canadians. And then there were the coupons, although none had been issued for Canadians for a while.
To me, what they've just done seems ridiculous and non-sensical (if there intent was to attract new customers). Shipping charges now apply, fine, that's acceptable. But, their prices have gone up significantly. Some egs. from casual searching.
'Before' prices are approximate figures in Cdn $ based on my recent memory, in some cases, prices were checked just a couple of days ago.
ATI Radeon 64 DDR VIVO Retail: Before-->$390 After-->$445.99
ATI Radeon 32 DDR Retail: Before-->$258 After--->$291.99
ATI AIW Radeon 32 DDR Retail: Before-->$409 After--->$480.99
Elsa Gladiac GF2 Ultra Retail: Before-->$800 (already high, but at least inline with the $500 pricetag seen on some U.S. sites) After-->$939.99!!:Q
Intel PIII 933 Retail SECC2: Before--->unknown, but buy.com sells it for $403.95U.S. After--->$729.99
(I also noticed that they no longer list the AMD Athlon and they only list a select few Intel CPUs)
Antex KS282: Before-->$105 After--->$132.99
Antex SX830: Before-->$135 After--->$159.99
I could go on but I digress...
In the above egs., prices have gone up by about 20%, and this is not even counting shipping, which of course was 'waived' previously. I have to say that IMO, notwithstanding so-called "brokerage fees" and the perhaps increased cost of doing business in Canada, their previous prices without coupons were average at best (assuming the product was in stock to begin with), although certainly better than places like Future Shop and Computer City we have here in Canada. Now, it is possible that they are just beginning to build up their 'new' site (both U.S. and Canada) and haven't finished listing all the components they intend to list, but I'm skeptical at this point. Further, the price hikes seem unprecedented.
I've called them a few times recently, and twice the entire sales team have been in a meeting (third time altogether). I guess they were discussing this transition at Onvia. BTW, the company that seems to have taken over (for Onvia.ca anyway) seems to be Insight.
This is mentioned in their customer service area. Talk about too many middle men adding very little to no value to the end user.
Well, I guess I won't be utilizing their services anymore. C'est la vie.
Edit: sp