[NBJack]

This rings true for my own experience.

While I have avoided most of the counterfeit dupes (of which I will broaden beyond just selling clones; there are plenty of shady products with questionable descriptions that don't match reality), they have been steadily increasing prices on many products to the point that I am often better off driving to a Lowes or Home Depot for faster service and better deals on things. I also can't emphasize enough that they haven't been that competitive in the laptop market or the home desktop PC market either for years now. Parts and DIY, sure, but I frequently find better deals elsewhere on what is usually the same hardware. I suspect the suppliers are the real root cause of this, but either way it ends up a bad deal. Additionally, finding things with targeted specs is surprisingly difficult at times, and can easily lead to choices that aren't even correct when search starts looking at adjacent products.