Will the XH G1 / A1 be fixed in price (forcefully by Canon) at $4K/7K like the XL H1?

Or will dealers have the freedom to choose whatever price and discount to offer to clients like the XL1s?

In England it's now illegal for an importer or manufacturer to have a 'reccommended price'. The shops haggle over quantities and buy them in, then try to sell them to you or me at a price we'll pay. Make a dealer an offer - I did with my FX1 and was quite surprised to have it accepted.

tom.

Well it is also Illegal in the USA! The attorney general would be more than interested in any such price fixing!

And furthermore, this sort of thing was never done for camcorders until Canon brought out the XL-H1. With that particular camera, for some reason they made the dealers stick absolutely to $8999. Some dealers that didn't were punished! I have heard of a couple of dealers walking in cruthces the day after they discounted the XL-H1... ;)

Anyway I hope the XH-A1 can be had for a "street" price of about $3K. Can't wait to get one! :)

At least within the US, neither setting an MSRP nor stipulating in dealership contracts that a product be sold at a certain price point constitute "price fixing." Both practices are routine in many, if not most, retail distribution chains. This was explained in this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=56839

But feel free to call your state attorney general if you believe otherwise.

It's not illegal for a manufacturer to "suggest" to a dealer that if they drop the price below MSRP they will cut them off as a dealer, actually most manufacturers have it in writing as part of the dealer agreement. The most obvious example of this method is Sony, go from one dealer to another and you'll find the same gear at the same price.

Typically after a few months, someone that is a very large purchaser of goods from that company will deem it acceptable to drop the price to push sales. Since the markup on this product is 20 to 40 percent, many vendors start by dropping 5% off list and blowing out a few boxes. The next step is for someone to start at cost and mark up 10% or even 5% from cost and at that point the manufacturer knows that the war is on.

Since the vendor held out for a reasonable amount of time and they are such a high dollar dealer, the rep might just not take the owner out to lunch that week to punish them, but all this is perfectly legal and goes on all the time. It keeps the playing field fair.

Want to get a new Canon, wait till Christmas or better yet, just after, you'll see below list prices really quick. Oh and about Canon being the only one, sorry, wrong, check out the prices on the Sony 2000 and 2100 for the first few months of their lives, list price all the way.

Miguel