Black Friday vs Hugel

Hugel IM'd me on Black Friday telling me that he had seen an external hard drive on sale for $89 on Amazon, but it didn't appear to still be on sale, and if I knew why this would be. He had a link to the hard drive, which I followed, and found that the drive was priced at $119. For the rest of this story, we will call this The Hard Drive That Hugel Mistakenly Thought He Saw On Sale But Never Actually Was.

I looked at the product page closely, as well as the Black Friday page, and found that not only was The Hard Drive That Hugel Mistakenly Thought He Saw On Sale But Never Actually Was, not on sale, but there was no indication that it was part of the Black Friday deals at all. Hugel insisted that The Hard Drive That Hugel Mistakenly Thought He Saw On Sale But Never Actually Was, was definitely on sale that day as part of Black Friday.

Then I found, under the Black Friday page, an external hard drive that was very similar, and was on sale for $89. It was made by the same company, had almost the exact same model name, and had all the same specs. Pretty much identical except this one was actually on sale. For the rest of this story, we will call this The Hard Drive That Hugel Actually Saw On Sale But He Confused It With The Other Hard Drive.

I sent Hugel a link to The Hard Drive That Hugel Actually Saw On Sale But He Confused It With The Other Hard Drive. He claimed that he was "no dummy", and that this was definitely not the hard drive he had seen on sale. I explained that it would be odd for Amazon to lower the cost of The Hard Drive That Hugel Mistakenly Thought He Saw On Sale But Never Actually Was down to $89, but then re-raise it to $119 as a part of the same deal. Furthermore, it seemed very much in the realm of possibilities that The Hard Drive That Hugel Actually Saw On Sale But He Confused It With The Other Hard Drive, which was extremely similar and made by the same company, was the one he had seen.

I then asked what the difference between the two drives was, as they seemed almost identical, except for different model names. Hugel said that he didn't want to buy The Hard Drive That Hugel Actually Saw On Sale But He Confused It With The Other Hard Drive, because the model name said 'Expansion Drive' in it. He also admitted he had no idea what that actually meant.

Seagate has stumbled upon a real marketing opportunity here. Hugel is willing to pay $30 more for an external hard drive, if it means not having the word 'Expansion' in its model name. Maybe if they took out the word 'External', he'd shell out an additional $50. In fact, they could market their exact same hard drives, but just not give them names at all, and who knows what Hugel would be willing to pay!