Rifle Scopes Vortex GEN 3 Razor Price increase.
- Thread starter bigjake83
- Start date
I agree it must just be that people don't know about them. I remember calling Vortex before I bought mine in November asking about them and the guy I talked to thought they'd all been sold already since it was (to his knowledge) a one time run they did for EuroOptic during the summer.
Not sure if @Euro.Connor or @Scott_at_Vortex can shed light on that.
Wouldn't the MSRP increase affect the LEO/Military Pricing? Because like stated above it's already reflecting on Expert voice as well.
Wait where is that thread I missed itHim constantly on his knees voluntarily blowing Athlon and China, and then them tracking his posts on here, and rolling him over and fucking him like a $2.00 whore on those warranty claims was truly a masterful thing to watch...
"Just buy a bunch of them on your credit card, and open the boxes, and mount them but don't leave ring marks, and whichever ones you don't like, send back for a full-refund...The companies taking a loss for now being forced to sell open-box items isn't my problem..."
I was paraphrasing months worth of posts, but he did say some stupid shit like encouraging people to buy scopes, open the boxes and then send them back if they didn't like them. Pretty shitty thing to do, honestly.
He might have deleted it, but search under his name, and it's something like Athlon Customer Service or something like that. It might still be there...
The title is highly explanatory of what is to follow.
Rifle Scopes - Brand New straight out of box Athlon Cronus BTR Gen 1 and Gen 2 factory defectiveNO warranty NO replacement by Athlon Optics WARNING BUYER BEWARE!!!
Just a warning to EVERYONE based on my own FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE here. I have had my first top of the line Athlon Cronus BTR 4.5-29x56 that had a defective illuminated reticle which only lights up 2/3's of the reticle while the other lower left hand portion is really dim ever since it was brand...
www.snipershide.com 
You buy them open box, and shave 3-400 off, and they warranty anyway, thankully you only have to experience this bullshit a couple time a your lol
Well it sure as hell increased the mil/LEO price on expert voice lmfao
No matter where you get it now it's flirting with the 3k mark after tax. I would think someone that is going to drop that on a scope would just come up with the extra thou or so and do what they were thinking about anyway.
Ah, then why cause all the consternation by raising the MSRP is its not intended/going to effect retail price?
Perhaps I'm a wee bit more dense that usual, but I don't see any upside and, as shown in this thread, there certainly is some downside from the confusion this has caused in their market for these scopes.
The heartburn you're seeing from members is because a lot of folks here buy their Vortex scopes at a steep discount through Vortex's Mil/LEO program on sites like ExpertVoice. And those prices are calculated based on MSRP, not MAP.
So the dudes with the big discounts got a pretty big price hike (a few months back, actually), whereas someone without that access may not see one at all, since the lowest price they're likely to pay is MAP (Minimum Advertised Price), which Scott is saying Vortex hasn't touched.
Yep, the current le/mil/vet discount price on expert voice is now higher than the current "everybody" price at Euro Optic minus the 15% VTX15 coupon... Doesn't make much sense. Either Expert Voice isn't going to be selling any more Gen 3s, or Euro Optic might update their price too. It's a weird situation at the moment.
Guess we'll see how things play out.
I prefer to buy from Euro Optic anyways over Expert Voice as they know the product and are easier to deal with if there's an issue. They also ship from stock on hand instead of drop shipping like expert voice.
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This is a big oof
For a few scheckles more you can get a used ZCO
Or two Burris XTR Pros
For a few scheckles more you can get a used ZCO
Or two Burris XTR Pros
The Pro is getting a new look. For all the non-lovers of the red highlights.
Long overdue... I can't stand the red...That's literally the only reason I bought an XTR-III 5.5-30x over a Pro.
I guess I'll either have to make due with the red, or sell my replacement when it gets back from Burris and maybe order an all black.
My black Razor Gen 3 came in yesterday. It is now sitting on my AT-X. Seems nice, but have not put it up against anyhing yet to compare to. Will do that in a few days. I certainly appreciate the smoothness in the magnification ring and parallax dials right off the bat.
My black Razor Gen 3 came in yesterday. It is now sitting on my AT-X. Seems nice, but have not put it up against anyhing yet to compare to. Will do that in a few days. I certainly appreciate the smoothness in the magnification ring and parallax dials right off the bat.
Have you looked through it out the back door yet? Thoughts on the glass?
Oh yeah, spent ~30 minutes sighting in on things across the pasture. The limiting factor is that I was looking through my glass windows as well. Weather here is supposed to be crappy for the next week. Right now, all I know is that I like everything that is supposed to move. Eyebox above 25x gets a bit tight...but I'll only ever be that high in magnification if I'm prone or on a bench, so not really any drawback. Eyebox 15-20x is very nice, which is where most guys are probably running it.
Back to "glass". I still have my buddy's S&B 5-25 PMII, and will put those side by side soon. I did that with my XTR Pro, and was surprised how close they were in clarity and resolution...but the edge still went to the S&B. From everything that I've read, the G3 "should" have better glass than the XTR Pro. I'll be able to give an unbiased opinion soon (hopefully) since I own both.
Thanks curious to hear what you think, I should have mine Wednesday so I'll post back sometime after that.
something something Austin Buschmann, not a jersey boy and crushes people.
yea, if they ever put fuckin MIL based ones on the site and they don't sell out to bots within 30 seconds.
Vortex needs to be careful. They have a winning price/performance recipe with the Gen 3 6-36 that is working. If they are just pushing up MSRP and plan on leaving MAP alone for marketing purposes, that is one thing, but not sure why they would do it other than to make someone not paying attention think they are getting a screaming price with MAP. However, if they actually plan to push up MAP (and the street price as a result), that could spoil the formula. Right now the value proposition is "almost as good as ZCO/Tangent for 40% off comparable street prices". If the proposition becomes "almost as good for almost as much money" that could backfire. I've been thinking about picking one up. The less than $3K price here and there on sale is already hefty and in the alpha range, leading one to ask "Should I pay this much for a compromise, even if it's not a big compromise?" Push the street price up another $500 and forget the compromise, I'll stick with the top dogs.
What would be cool is if you went the opposite direction with it like many other companies have done and got rid of the stupid inflated MSRP that’s almost double what they actually sell for. If you went to an MRP like Leupold has done it would eliminate a lot of pricing confusion and people could actually use these things in PRS production class too.
What was the reasoning for raising the MSRP but not dealer pricing or MAP? I’d love to hear the logic behind this.
With the current increase in MSRP pricing which is what the LEO/MIL program is based off of, it's putting the Gen3 at the same price as the NightForce ATACR line.
I've done a side by side of the Gen3 6-36x56 and the Nightforce 7-35x56, the Nightforce has the edge over the Gen3 in clarity and light gathering, that being said yeah Vortex is going to loose a huge amount of thier sales to Nightforce with its LEO/Mil customers who buy direct from Vortex or ExpertVoice. Nightforce also carries over a higher value in the second hand Market as well.
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Brother testing one scope against another single scope by a single tester will seldom give an overall concussion That test would take many different production samples and many different users to get an accurate result
From all my samples of both I have seen in classes I teach I can say both the Gen 3 Vortex and top Nightforce are better than needed and different people see one or the other as the better optics In short both fng great
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I already said that I really like Vortex. But, the Nightforce name carries more prestige. If these 2 scopes are really a coin flip, and they are priced equivalently, more consumers will pick Nightforce for the name than they will Vortex. This is the quagmire Vortex risks wading into with what I’m going to call a “prestige” increase in “price.”
Remember that Scott already said that they just raised the price. They didn’t raise the price…
I've thought about this some more and I'm throwing the BS flag on this one unless Scott comes back and provides an actual cogent, logical reason for raising MSRP while claiming there will be no effect on actual retail sales price.
This makes zero sense and its difficult to understand the advantage to Vortex for doing this unless they expect to raise dealer...and hence retail...pricing.
This just doesn't smell right to me.
This makes zero sense and its difficult to understand the advantage to Vortex for doing this unless they expect to raise dealer...and hence retail...pricing.
This just doesn't smell right to me.
Almost like the photo showing AI leaving the firing pin out of their "improved bolt lift" new AT-XC/MIL on display at SHOT, while it remained in the "regular" rifle below it. It isn't the price that completely shuts me off. It is the integrity.
Ive done several side by side comparisons against the NightForce ATACR line to include the Gen2 Razor, Gen3 Razor, Burris XTR Pro, Bushnell ET XRS3 6-36x56,
KAHLES K525i. They are both exceptional Scopes in their own right but IMO as the customer who is dropping 3k, Nightforce is going to be my scope of choice in this new price category.
Glass quality is highly subjective because everyone's eye is different, it truly boils down to what the customer prefers and in this situation Nightforce is my choice.
I’m going to guess that at previous MSRP it doesn’t work with their LE/Mil pricing which is like 50% off but it’s off of MSRP and not MAP. It’s all marketing bullshit, advertise a higher price so that you can advertise a bigger discount. It tricks a lot of people that just don’t know better.
The Euro Optic certs for 30% off MAP end up with the same or slightly better price than mil/le because you’re starting at MAP for the discount which is already 25% below MSRP.
NF makes it work with mil/le/industry pricing without a stupid inflated MSRP and so does Leupold now who used to do the same thing but got rid of it. The price you see listed on their website is the same price you see dealers listing them at now.
Home - ExpertVoice
If you're an industry professional, sales associate, or influencer who people trust for advice, ExpertVoice is for you. Here, you can join an elite community who gets exclusive access to your favorite products at up to 60% off MSRP.
www.expertvoice.com It's a discount program intended mostly for retail employees, industry media professionals, outdoor guides, etc. There are also other organizations that use the site to provide discounts for members (NRA Instructors being one example).
I think the core idea is that it provides brands a way to get their product into the hands of folks who interact directly with end consumers, but might not other wise be able to try or afford a lot of gear at full price. Such as employees at big boxes stores like Cabela's, or smaller retailers that specialize in outdoor gear, footwear, hunting equipment, firearms, etc.
You need to be able to provide proof of membership or employment with one of the groups/orgs that has a discount program through the site. And the available discounts vary depending on what group you're affiliated with. And members are not supposed to disclose specific discounts or pricing (it's grounds for dismissal from the program).
There are also programs for active duty and retired military and LEO.
What was the price of a Gen III last month. Haven’t paid attention but EuroOptic is listing it at $2999.99
Most likely because the number of people purcahsing scopes on expert voice for 40% discounts has reached critical mass and they're fucking sick of it lol
Nobody is making them use EV. With the price increase, even at EV price, one is forced to entertain other options.
No but I am sure they would get a lot of flak for discontinuing that program, this way it just makes that program worthless for their flagship products.
Not just flagship products, the MSRP on a PST Gen II went to $1650. At 50% off that's still $825, basically what a bunch of stores were selling them to anyone for 3 months ago. Every store now, is priced at exactly $1099 on those scopes across the board. Not sure how Vortex does math but that's a significant effective price increase.
Seems like what they really did was make it so Mil/LE took the biggest price increase and are now paying what street prices were 3 months ago, and everyone else is paying 20% more than street prices were. Vortex can say they didn't increase dealer cost or MAP all they want, reality is if you buy a Vortex today you're going to pay a lot more than 3 months ago.
Seems like what they really did was make it so Mil/LE took the biggest price increase and are now paying what street prices were 3 months ago, and everyone else is paying 20% more than street prices were. Vortex can say they didn't increase dealer cost or MAP all they want, reality is if you buy a Vortex today you're going to pay a lot more than 3 months ago.
There's the problem. While still a good a scope, the PST 2 is a dinosaur. The price increase will drive consumers elsewhere, even at mil and LE prices.
Agreed with the competition out there now in the $1000-$1200 price range, no way I'd touch a PST Gen 2 at $1100, and I actually like the scope quite a bit. Even the 4.7-27 is quite old, and still a good scope, but there's so little price delta between it as the Gen III I can't imagine many people are buying the Gen II's now.
That said they probably are trying to re-align the PST too to a higher pricing tier. The Strike Eagle for awhile has been priced very close to the PST in street pricing, with basically no discount from MSRP for the SE for some reason. Having had a few copies of both, the SE has some nice features but the PST is significantly better optically. SE isn't bad, but no way I'd pay $800 for one, I sold both of the ones I had. So they probably wanted to push some more price gap between them. No doubt though the PST is in need of a refresh, but also at what cost......if the dinosaur is now going to be $1100, a refresh would have to bring a lot of upgrades, without a lot of price increase because there's some pretty heavy competition in that $1500-$2000 bracket.
That said they probably are trying to re-align the PST too to a higher pricing tier. The Strike Eagle for awhile has been priced very close to the PST in street pricing, with basically no discount from MSRP for the SE for some reason. Having had a few copies of both, the SE has some nice features but the PST is significantly better optically. SE isn't bad, but no way I'd pay $800 for one, I sold both of the ones I had. So they probably wanted to push some more price gap between them. No doubt though the PST is in need of a refresh, but also at what cost......if the dinosaur is now going to be $1100, a refresh would have to bring a lot of upgrades, without a lot of price increase because there's some pretty heavy competition in that $1500-$2000 bracket.
$800 for Chinese strike eagles and $1000+ for PST’s is absolutely insane. I wouldn’t pay half of that for either of them.
Which is a real problem on the forums actually. When the SE came out everyone was enamored with it. All you read was how amazing it was, how great the glass was for the price, what a great deal at the price point it was, etc. etc. Fast forward 3 years and everyone has figured out they are not that impressive, not garbage, but not great, and it's not that $600 optics have gotten so amazing in 3 years that they've just fallen behind the new stuff. Same thing happened with the Bushnell Match Pro, and is happening with the Match Pro HD and XTR III, the list goes on an on. It's very rare a product 2 years after release is thought of even close to as highly as it was hyped and reviewed in it's first season.
It's a warning about every new product that comes out. It seems like so many of them get hyped up, either by marketing, or sponsored shooters, reps etc. that we quickly find out in a couple years the products don't live up to all we hear about them early on. We hear a lot about how people only come online to post negative things, but I think most would be very shocked to see how many people are also posting positive things with ulterior motives. Entire significant companies exist now to do nothing but generate realistic fake reviews for companies/products. It's now estimated that 20-25% of all reviews for common products are fake. There's thousands of private facebook groups where people get paid to write fake reviews, estimated to have over 1 million members.
That's not even getting into the issue of manufacturer pressure on forums. Even Lowlight has said that manufacturer(s) basically put an end to SH releasing scope tracking testing results because they were too butt hurt about them.
I'm not so sure the XTRIII fits in that category
Sales get better every year, and they've dropped their prices on it to make sure it's always a great value, not increased them.
A driving factor in moving production to the Phillipines was that they couldn't meet demand in Greeley. The Burris facility isn't huge. With the production of the XTR Pro, Steiner T6Xi, and some other items in house, they didn't have the bandwidth to continue to crank out XTRIIIs stateside.
But not to hijack your post or this thread. It's a Vortex thread. But I do get your point. I think a lot of scopes are the new hot, bright, and shiny when they release. Its hard for a product to sustain that. Especially as new products release every year. The new MK4 is a perfect example of releasing with a lot of hype. I see people recommending them already when no one has ever even had one in their hand before.
It's fair, but we've certainly seen some cracks in Burris recently being reported in both customer service and product issues. Sure all companies have issues, certainly more so since Covid, and we hear more about bad than good, etc. Their holding company Beretta is hardly known for high customer service, in fact the extreme opposite. Sig is another company that when they first started making rifle scopes they could do no wrong, and a couple years later the real story that their glass quality is pretty much abysmal at the price points has come to light. Their $1000+ Sierra6 BDX and Tango6 scopes originally got ridiculously high praise. The Sierra6 BDX line doesn't even compare optically to a $300 Bushnell Elite that's 15 years old.
It will be interesting to see if in a couple years if the XTR III still maintains a high level of praise, as more and more of them get into the wild. There's always the new shiny syndrome, we all want our gear choices to be the best performance/value, and frankly most folks don't go through enough product, or understand the scientific process to make repeatable valid conclusions comparing optics, so that also works in manufacturers favor. It's really too bad that in sporting optics there's no independent optical labs testing gear with real optics eval gear like you see for say camera lenses, astronomy telescopes, etc.
It will be interesting to see if in a couple years if the XTR III still maintains a high level of praise, as more and more of them get into the wild. There's always the new shiny syndrome, we all want our gear choices to be the best performance/value, and frankly most folks don't go through enough product, or understand the scientific process to make repeatable valid conclusions comparing optics, so that also works in manufacturers favor. It's really too bad that in sporting optics there's no independent optical labs testing gear with real optics eval gear like you see for say camera lenses, astronomy telescopes, etc.
One will certainly see a lot of positivity in the media regarding new releases. Either the company is paying for the reviews in one way or another, or the reviewer wants to make some monetary gains/review for a living - and you certainly don't get gear sent to you for review when you shit on the new products.
Back to Vortex. They had a pretty good thing going, fitting their products well into the niches in the market. I don't think that their success warranted trying to increase pricing across the lines though. Too many good, competitive options that are now going to be less.
Got to zero my Gen 3 Razor the other day. The zeroing function is incredibly easy. Consider me a big fan of that.
Back to Vortex. They had a pretty good thing going, fitting their products well into the niches in the market. I don't think that their success warranted trying to increase pricing across the lines though. Too many good, competitive options that are now going to be less.
Got to zero my Gen 3 Razor the other day. The zeroing function is incredibly easy. Consider me a big fan of that.
To me the issue with the XTR3 is that beyond the shitty CS that we’ve recently seen which isn’t surprising is that they get compared to scopes that are far better and claimed to be just as good. The same thing happened with the PST’s years ago when they came out, even the gen 1’s, people legitimately compared them to NF and claimed they were as good.
Burris has been lowering the price on the XTR3’s since they came out which is weird. I don’t know if they just weren’t selling well, they got cheaper to product, or what but they were like $1500+ street price when they came out which was insane and they weren’t worth anywhere close to that. That’s MK5 and a slew of quality LOW built optics money which kicks it’s ass. Then they lowered them down and you could get them for $1100-$1200 for the illuminated model. Now you can get them for under $800 delivered for the same thing, a $300+ price drop and they’ve also dropped the MSRP on their website.
XTR Pros are the same way, street price was a little over $2K a couple months ago and $1800 was a great deal. Now you can get them for $1450 delivered.
I think there's a fair amount of people on here that do a exceptional job comparing and performing in-depth reviews on the latest offerings with a wide range of manufacturers, Big Jim Fish and Iyla always go above and beyond to get the latest product information out to potential customers.
Burris has a long way to go IMO before I'd ever take them seriously or recommend them again. No one in this industry has a perfect track record, but Customer Service and warranty are just as important as the product itself and they failed on both accounts.
The Vortex Gen3 Razor imo is worth every bit of $2,300.00- $2,500.00 but as mentioned above once you break the 3K price point it opens a whole new world of Alpha quality optics.
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