I agree, and the OP’s arguments are just mind bogglingly silly.
I’ve never heard that term before, thanks 
i love it 
Well, I’ve been in business and I know and understand exactly what bugsy36 is saying. It seems too many people are not able to talk rationally about a subject they feel personally affected by. I ran across a quote from Aristotle a while back that I think speaks to this situation:
It is a fact that MAP touches every area of our lives. I thought it was funny that kuoh even missed the irony of his own statement:
Obviously, it was part of his argument against MAP, and yet, it is the best argument in favor of MAP that has been presented, for it is the very reason MAP exists, as stated in the OP. Please, guys, think about what is being said. And, if you must disagree, give a logical reason for it, not some emotional response that has no bearing on the conversation except to derail what might otherwise be a rational discussion of the topic.
Thanks a lot to those who already went back and edited or deleted their rude posts. There’s a still a few more left, and a few more new rude posts as well. Please fix them.
Also, to those who quoted rude posts, please edit those too.
MAP benefits all of us and is everywhere. Everyone can call it price-fixing, anti-consumer, etc etc, but the fact is it is everywhere and it does have its purpose. It benefits me no more than it benefits anybody else on this forum but it does benefit us by making companies profitable (and not just Chinese vendors). Just because the name is BLF does not mean that we have to regulate ourselves to cheap $3 clones and shun anything or anyone that has MAP.
David you feel “touched” by Map do you?
:bigsmile:
Yes, should I tell an adult? :shy:
Was it good touch or bad touch? 0:)
The only obvious thing to me is that MAP ensures more profit for the seller/manufacturer, whether it is deserved or not, and higher prices for the buyers. I am not aware of or see the benefits that you or the OP are attempting to rationalize. A point was brought up about GM cars being higher priced because of less competition and somehow MAP would’ve made a positive difference. That makes little sense, as they (domestic makers) had been on the decline due to poor quality and high prices for a long time. Raising prices and nothing else in the midst of an economical downturn is not the way to turn the trend around. MAP would’ve in essence forced the public to subsidize them even more, if they were loyal customers, or bail completely and go elsewhere to get their money’s worth. In the end, we did end up having to bail them out! Were/are the dealers already bound by strictly enforced MAP? If so, then it certainly points against it being a good thing.
http://www.edmunds.com/autoobserver-archive/2009/01/2008-us-auto-sales-are-worst-since-1992.html
This same rational applies to the flashlight market as well. While I can follow the twisted logic being used to present MAP as a factor to increase competition, if only by keeping the barely capable manufacturer/sellers in the market, I see it as artificial and not an overall positive contribution. I have still yet to see an acceptable explanation/example of how MAP is everywhere and we just don’t know it.
KuoH
“Price Too Low To Advertise!!!” is a signal to watch for.
Those actually interested should read the recent results — here’s a clickable somewhat focused (“verbatim”) search limited to the past year:
Is - Google Search%22MAP%22+minimum+advertised+price+law+legal%3F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=Is%22MAP%22+minimum+advertised+price+law+legal%3F&tbs=qdr:y
There’s actually a lot going on with this issue in various and different jurisdictions.
Seriously. Stop. Click that link. Note the law’s changes and the guidance offered about how to do MAP right, and how easily and how often it’s done wrong.
—— got that down?—-
That’s all the information I have to offer. Nothing but opinion follows.
Most of us only remember what happened in the past — up to the last time we learned about the subject.
That’s really not the best way to equip oneself for a useful exchange of views.
When in doubt about how to proceed on the Internets, you can always read the fine manual, written long long ago by a mathematician named Dodgson.
A few excerpts I’d suggest useful to guide discussion:
As it says there:
[For everything that’s not in your memory yet, ’oogle first, post after understanding the newer information you didn’t know yet]
and
I’ve never come across an Internet discussion that I couldn’t understand better after reviewing Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.
Obviously, the OP is a dealer. That is a given, since no one, other than a dealer, would say MAP is good.
Obviously most of the rest of us are consumers, so we know MAP is not good for the consumer, as it is price fixing.
Help protect the manufacturer and the dealer? Really? Do you think we really care? I care about one thing. My pocketbook, not anyone else's. That has been drummed into me all my life and good OR bad, it is what it is, so as far as I am concerned, MAP is bad for me and that is all I care about.
This is a useless thread that needs to go away.
I’m not the manufacturer company, an increase of price because of greedy market manipulation practices does NOT benefit me in the slightest no matter who says it does or how much he or she repeates that spiel.
There’s no justifying the gouging. And even if enormous companies like McDonalds do it, guess what: that doesn’t make it right.
This argument sucks fumes through a straw.
from the first page of the search I suggested a few posts back, this is a good brief summary.
It’s not as simple as it seems.
If you want to limit your discussion to United States law, that will help.
If you’re talking about international law, or Freedom!, or something else, that won’t help a bit.
And if you’re talking about prices you see when buying from China, well remember, we all need good luck with that.
You had said that McDonald’s should be able to set the prices to be the same in all of “their” stores. But, the stores aren’t “theirs”, only the product is. Flashlight manufacturers set the price for their own brand, not for the market. If they all got together and set a market price, that would be price fixing. But, they don’t. They compete with each other. What they don’t want is a “cheap” re-seller under-cutting their other re-sellers and throwing them out of balance.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you and I are both Nitecore re-sellers. We both get the Nitecore products for the same price and we both sell them at a profit. Now, let’s say that you have a local store-front where people can walk in and look at what you have. They can ask you questions about the products and get recommendations. If they have a problem after the sale, they can come back to you and you will make it right. All of this excellent customer service is a valuable resource to your store’s visitors, so they keep coming back to buy from you. They trust you.
Now, what if I was a cheap re-seller who had no store-front, and no physical place people could go to shop. I just ran an on-line store. On my website, I could make all the same promises of customer service that you make. Except that customers would have to contact me by e-mail if they had a complaint. And, since Nitecore makes nice products, I get few complaints. Because of that, the complaints I do get, I can treat with disdain if I want to, and it won’t much affect my business. So, really, I don’t need to provide good customer service. With all of this cheapness on my side, I’m able to sell the products for $15 cheaper than you and yet still make more profit than you do.
Is it fair? Should I be rewarded for being able to make money this way? Over time, if left unchecked, I will run you out of business. All’s fair in love and war, right? The “better” seller wins out and everybody gets cheaper flashlights. Yay!
This is an example of just one of the realities of doing business in this world. There are a lot of variables from shop to shop, from vendor to vendor, from place to place. A MAP policy in place helps to make sure the variables don’t eventually force the wrong person out of business because someone else can do it cheaper. And, of course, if the MAP price is too high, everyone still has a choice of switching to a different manufacturer whose MAP price is lower, or even to a manufacturer who isn’t enforcing MAP on their products at all. No price fixing. Competition is still there. But, the manufacturers using MAP are doing so to protect their re-sellers. From their perspective, it actually has very little to do with you as the end consumer.
Obviously you’re wrong. I’m not a dealer at all. I even prefer to buy flashlights as cheap as I can, just like you. But, I say MAP is good for everyone, especially consumers!
seizure 
…and yet still wrong.
Fun, though. :bigsmile:
The manufacturer sets the price that he needs to to make his profit, and then the retailers buy his goods at that price if they choose, and then decide their own prices for the stock that they now own and that works for them.
I’m glad that my favorite canned chili doesn’t price fix, I have found that Walmart sells it much cheaper than Albertsons, and cheaper than on Amazon.
I have always assumed that MAP is about protecting branding by protecting the high value (high price) image of a product (oooh, it must be better because it cost more than brand X, and never goes on sell).
Once a MAP product loses it’s artificial propping up as a high priced premium product, then it’s retail price eventually becomes more reflective of it’s actual worth.
If a manufacturer wants to determine the sell price of it’s products after it is bought and leaves the factory, then they need to open their own chain of stores, that they run or franchise, and that they sell out of, and keep their product out of the rest of the market place, like McDonald’s does.
If I could go to the various hamburger factories and buy all their hamburgers at a wholesale price, then I might open a hamburger store online or store front where a customer could buy a McDonald’s, Denny’s, Burger King, In and Out, Jack in the Box, White Castle, burger, but if the burger chains ever allowed their product to go free range like that, and sold directly from the factory to individual non-affiliated global-burger places, then I would not expect them to control the pricing by my business.