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As you might have noticed from an earlier post (thanks, Lisa, for uploading that horrid photo) we’ve got a couple of webcams. We bought them so that when I’m away from home we can use Skype to keep in touch and I can say hello to The Kids before they go to bed at night.

I was initially going to buy the Microsoft VX-3000, but every review I read said that the microphone quality was pretty poor.

Every such review also said that the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 was the camera to buy. I couldn’t find a bad word about these; everyone — professional reviews and consumers alike — said they were the bees knees.

The only problem I had was the price. The RRP is $199.95, and given that I wanted two, that meant smacking down $400 on webcams, which I was not about to do.

I did some digging on staticice, however, and found that MSY sell them for $102. This was a much better price. The only problem I had there, though, was that I couldn’t get to MSY in time and even if I had they didn’t have stock.

On the way home, on a teensy bit of a hunch, I dropped into OfficeWorks. They had them in stock, but wanted $149.95 — a saving over RRP, but still a bit much.

While I was there though I overhead someone else asking about getting a discount, and the OfficeWorks person said basically: We don’t discount. What we will do, however, is beat a valid competitor’s price by 5%.

Bingo.

I spoke to one of their very friendly staff, pointed them to the $102 price on the MSY website, and left the store with two Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 cameras for $96 each — less than the RRP price of one camera. Happy with that.