Hi: I went to Office Max today since we are nowhere near a BestBuy, because I saw on the net that Office Max had the Verbatim discs 16X (50 pack) for $12.99. A saleman there told me that Verbatim aren't very good and that HP are much better and cost less. Is this true? Another thing, when I got to Office Max, they were marked as $34.95!! I showed them the ad from the internet which I printed and also the ad from BestBuy so they had to honor that price.
In terms of media brands don't really mean anything. Verbatim are owned by MCC I believe who also manufacture most of the discs. Mitsubishi are generally pretty decent. No idea who made the HP discs in question though. I know here you can get Iomega 16X's cheaper than Verbatim's and both are the same MCC discs. So same disc, but cheaper. So I guess ask if he knows the media code or at least the manufacturer. If he doesn't then he is either full of shit or just repeating something that he heard.
This is NOT true. Verbatim are top notch media second only to TaiyoYudens. These salsemen haven't a clue as to what they are selling, They are trained to push the stuff they buy low wholesale and mark up drastically. Just enough to be a little cheaper than the good stuff. Watch for sales; never pay retail. "You can buy cheap media or you can buy good media cheap."