What what WHAT????!!!
 

Ummm..... TeamOrion, you have GOT to be kidding. Its the EXACT SAME charger, specs and all and your making peeps pay a 100%+ price markup? Wow, talk about highway robbery here folks.

We have the well known Thunder AC6 charger for a very nice price of $55

http://www.hobbypartz.com/thac6smbachw.html

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...r-Power-02.jpg


But wait, whats this? Team Orion has something that looks......very familiar

http://www.teamorion.com/Products/Ad...dvantage+IQ605


The SAME thing for $120??!!

http://www.amainhobbies.com/product_...rger-6S-5A-50W

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...0603_iq605.jpg



Oh but it gets even better! After some more looking around, what do we have here??

http://www.hobbypartz.com/skychb6chdup.html

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m...18_1224674.gif



My goodness, I think someone is making a killing in China for selling "cloned" chargers to a variety of companies and then passing on some insane and plain unfair markups to consumers. Just change the color and a nice, new sh in lable and wallah, instant rip off!

Do your research folks, companies like Team Orion just love to prey on the uninformed consumer.

EDIT:

Here's an even closer look at how even the innards are exactly the same for the most part

[YOUTUBE]uF9e6xPLGyw[/YOUTUBE]

Freeze! These chinese companies have been doing the same thing do ages on these these new, cheap lipo chargers....

The IMAX B5/B6 that hobbyking has has been cloned and renamed by many companies, including Venom. Of course the price jumps up with the name too!

^That. Im suprized you only just noticed really- I've seen the same charger with a different label on being sold by half a dozen different companies probably; price varies drastically. Take a look at the Venom Pro charger and then head over to hobbyking... you'll have a heart-attack :lol:

Neil, its fun to go to the race track and see guys using it. Then show them my spare B5 charger that I got for $30. And then watch them have a heart attack knowing they paid hobby shop prices for the same thing...:surprised:

I still choke at the £100 / $150 I paid for my Bantam BC6, when the Thunder AC6 does exactly the same thing and costs ~£30/$55. That said, there werent so many clone-chargers around 3-5 years ago, but still.... :sarcastic:

Whats worse is that my LHS is charging $200 for that Orion charger and I about flipped out. I actually brought my AC6 in and showed it to a guy who was thinking about buying and he was shocked as well.

In hindsight, maybe that wasn't such a good idea.....

<---- just bought a genaric Ipod...


there are a few companies rebadging the quatro charger too at insanely high markups...

Yeah you guys are right but your missing the fact that the names are different so the cost goes to changing the names DUH lol ( sarcasm)

Missing the point.
 

Guys your missing the real point here. This is probably just like the whole RCM slipperential deal. One company more than likely designed and produced their unit from scratch and some Chinese copycat bought one and duplicated it, selling it for a fraction of the price. This is exactly how China became such a rich country, by ripping off American designs. Our politicians have allowed this to go on with their open trade policies putting money into their pockets as well. BUT with our economy now in the toilet which are we more likely to purchase???

Says the man ironically living in Asia :whistle:

Funny
 

Funny you say that. We do not even shop outside the military base. Allot of people purchase the latest DVD movies on the Korean market place for $3 to $4 a piece ripping off the American movie industry. We have a DVD collection of about 800 and everyone of them are original USA DVD's purchased on the US market. We do everything we can to support our country even if that means passing up on what look like good deals or exact copies of US products. The major problem there is no matter where you purchase from Macy's, Sac's, Sears, or any other American company if you look close enough you will find things that are made in China, Taiwon, Korea, or Maylasia. If we see products that appeal to us we always check for where it is made, and if it isn't made in the USA it goes back on the shelf.

Video comparison of innards of clones

IDK that they illegal clones, they are all likely just built by the same company and whatever company X goes to them and has them build their own branded charger.
You don't think Orion and Venom hire teams of electrical and software engineers, and build manu facilities for these things do you? No, they just contract the base manu's to build the chargers for them to spec. They resell it and pass the markups on to you.

Much is the same with lots of appliances. There are only a few dishwasher, water heater, dryer, etc manus (sometimes only 2.) GE, Kenmore, etc, just contract them to build them a branded unit. These are more shameless as Orion et al don't bother really changing any specs rather than the stickers.

EG. Foxconn.
The world's largest electronics manufacturer you've likely never heard of.
The build all the ipods, iphones, etc as well as products for Dell, HP, & a host of others. The one factory in China employs almost 500,000 people there. Hell, maybe they even built that charger and all its clones.

I wish i could do the same. However, everything seems to be made where the labor is cheap. You would think with today's American economy that would mean labor is cheap in the States, but it is not. Even at minimum wage a shirt made in the US costs more to produce than in another country. As for the outsourcing.

As for the chargers go, I am sure that 90 percent or more of them are all made in the East. So for one Eastern company to copy and sell a product cheaper than another Eastern manufacturer I couldn't really care, unless that design was designed and produced in America first. If the company designs a product and decides to take advantage of the cheap labor in another country I fell they should not be surprised if their design gets duplicated. However if, like Mike, a product that is designed, produced, and sold in America gets replicated by a company outsourcing it's labor to the Eastern world, that is in my eyes a legal conflict and I would be pissed.

The only high paying part of any manufacturing process these days is in the designing stage. Just for an example, Apple. 100% of it's products are designed in the US, and these jobs are of the highest paying in the Silicon valley. However those designs get shipped off to an outsourced manufacture to complete the finished product.

My question for you is, how is the moral of an Eastern manufacture employee? Seeing as you live amidst them. How do they live and work? Miserable? On strike? If you answer no, than you have answered the very reason we outsource everything. They know we are dependent on them, and frankly they are more grateful for the labor than we were. Nowadays it makes me wonder if we did have this labor return to America, whether or not we would be grateful for it, and the American populist would be okay with the higher price of goods made in America.

And if it wasn't this way everyone would complain about the prices.

I actually had someone argue with me that Apple actually made their own phones etc. It was funny.

There are also really only three manufacturers of laptops as well. If you search around you can find direct importers and buy the same ones as the big name brands for much cheaper with excellent support.

It's the same with a lot of products. Even food and medicines. I stopped buying name brand OTC medicines years ago and my body can't tell the difference.

Patents are basically the only fight left in Monopolism. <- Not a real word. They can be the root of two evils. They provide safety for those who need it, but also provide the control for those who will take advantage of it. Google Monsanto.

Answering question.
 

To answer your question about labor in Asia Korea has become one of the most efficient producer of many goods, and their economy is thriving because we are buying a good portion of their goods, just like we do from China and a few other places. The average labor worker has no idea who they are building for or where the products are going, nor could they care less as long as they get paid at the end of the day. Moral here is actually pretty healthy and they are glad to be working for what they get paid. Hyunde is one of the strongest auto companies in the world today, and that is because not only are they selling a large number of vehicles to the USA, but they buy their own products to support their home economy. Thats what we should be doing.

Just wanted to throw this out there. This makes my angry, happy and sad.

$3.83 8' hdmi cable
$99.99 8' hdmi calble

There is a point where it gets rediculous.. :whip:

Standard mark up
 

Actually what allot of people do not know is that the standard mark up in the USA is 300% over the normal retail value, which is exactly what you showed there. So I am not surprized at all. What does surprize me is thinking about that $3.83 price compared to what it actually cost them to manufacture the item, and the fact that they are willing to sell it at that price. That thinking is where we started in America back in the 1940's, and look where we are now on the greedy scale. Labor costs have driven prices out of this world for us, because everybody wants to make more and save more than everyone else. GREED is what drives us in the USA as compared to places like China who are driven by survival.

nailed it right on the head:yes:

that is exactly what this country has become and why China and these other asian countries are gaining so much wealth and power.

Thank you
 

I just call it like I see it. No one can say that earning over $100K for an annual salary is a means for survival. And again look at our professional athletes. Back when I was a kid ball players were earning a desent salary, and loving what they did, and were grateful for the life they had because of the sports. Now a days they are like a bunch of spoiled kids demanding $100 million a year, which is driving the price of a ticket through the roof, and no one can afford to even go to a game any longer. GREED is pushing our economy over the edge and at some point will destroy our way of life.

Greed undermines capitalism

IDK, seems greed is essential to capitalism. I see it more as an agnostic force that needs to be harness and directed effectively, but of course that is easier said than done.

As far as China goes, I was reading an interesting article on tech jobs and the US a little while ago written by Andy Grove, one of Intel's co-founder's and longtime leader/Ceo/etc. Longer article, but a good read.


Basically what he was saying its not so much just a function of labor costs that has lead to China's success (altho undoubtedly an advantage) but a large range of American policy failures and misplaced devaluation of manufacturing and factory work.

A lot of praise (and captial) goes start-ups an technological development, but the major shift America has seen (and not cared so much about) is the movement of the next phase of work, the scale-up and production, has been moved out of the country. By his estimates, there are 10 jobs produced for every one start-up job. By ignoring the scale up work, we are ignoring 90% of the jobs. In turn, we are getting very low returns in jobs for the money that we invest in job creation and innovation.

China gladly takes them, and there is massive support by the gov't to bring those jobs there. Grove advocates a much more protectionist stance by the US, and re-alignment of priorities of tax, trade and business laws to favor job creation at home, and disincentivize businesses to ship the jobs overseas. There is also a critical clock that is ticking, where we are losing our knowledge base and experience doing these things, and venture capitalists are rising in China that will eventually threaten the innovators here in the US.

Overall, I think we have been a bit blind to the game China is playing. Currency manipulation, massive govt subsidies, as well as widespread social repression, censorship and propaganda to squelch dissent and strenghten the ruling govt.

I don't think we can win on the pure labor costs. Not only are we more developed and less overcrowded, we are a democratic and free people who would never tolerate the working conditions and oppression that goes on in China to support their strategy. That's not to say there is not a third way, and we may need to question our priorities, as well as beliefs in free and open trade when our "partners" are not playing by the same rules and leaving us as highminded chumps. Every recovery we've had after a recession in the last 20 years has been longer and slower than the last as there are fewer good jobs to return to.


Sry for the wall-o-text, ran way longer than I meant to...

They may live on a lesser quality of life than us Americans but I still feel that they live happier lives. Seeing as the consequences for being independent and free are more severe in these countries, people tend to have a better outlook on a job that doesn't bring joy to their life. In America, the general populist hates their job. Wants one that does this or that. With that mentality how is labor going to develop? Honestly Americans have got it good. Hate your job? Just quit. Even I have done that. Sure it was rough, but I didn't starve, I didn't loose anything. Too many infrastructures to milk off of to go completely dry. If someone in one of the Eastern countries did this, they would be dishonored by their family, and most likely lose more than an American would.

Simply put, to increase production and labor in the states we would need to learn to work these supposed lessor working conditions and jobs.

Which, with the nations standard of living being around that of the life of a middle class household, will most likely never happen. Thankfully we have illegals for those substandard lifestyles that do exist inside the states.

Yeah man, I have no idea. There are a bunch of Chinese nationals where I work, and its funny to see the number of them starting to return to China after being here for a while. Its not a flood or anything, but China has come so far that many are starting to think about heading back and taking adv of their wealth.

OTOH, there is another co-worker I have who is here after he spent some time in a Chinese dungeon as a political prisoner. He doesn't give a F about anything. His basic attitude as nothing really matters as its still better than sitting in a Chinese prison.
:/

The older I get, the more I truly believe that life is all about perspective

I should have been more specific with greed...rampant greed, unfettered greed...you get the idea, it does need control otherwise you end up with our current GFC problem

As far as China, India etc are concerned. They will have their time soon enough...empires crumble, superpowers crumble, we all die. Nothing is more certain

One must remember greed comes in two forms, greed for money, and greed for power. A lot of times if you have power you have little need for me. This can be seen easily enough in our governments who's greed for power has become completely uncontrolled. This is why we as a people have to control our government and not surrender more power to them. The whole point of our constitution and the three most important words "We The People".

Once given freedoms and rights will you ever want to go back. Thing about most third world, well I shouldn't say that, countries under higher governing powers, is that the civilians living there know no other way of life. Look at China, they sensor so much of the web they can't really get a glimpse of anything. Some nations are so ignorant to human rights, that the States created, that there way of life is just that theirs. Only upon further knowledge of these rights and freedoms do they truly get a glimpse of how shitty their lives may have been.

Than they indulge on fast food and light beer until they have diabetes and die of a heart attack! :whistle: