Columns Give me a dollar

http://www.bit-tech.net/columns/2007/03/24/give_me_a_dollar/1.html

 

Aye, I know what you mean, I wanted to ship a game to a friend of mine in the UK, the game cost 17$, to ship internationally they were demanding 30$.
I had them ship it to me, went to USPS, asked them to ship it out, cost me 6$, overnight.

 

I was looking at Amazon last night. I wanted to buy a fairly obscure cd so looked at both the American version of the site and English. It was a bit cheaper for America so I looked in to purchasing it through there. They were actually quite happy for me to place the order through the american site, and only informed me about the english version briefly, to say that I would get faster delivery ordering from there.
I was quite surprised to be honest. They even had my address saved.

If only more sites would do this.

 

Coff *PS3* Coff.

 

Is it just me or does the description of that tea sound exactly like the one on the back of a PG tips box?

 

Yeah, its true. I tried to order something on tigerdirect.COM as it had an exclusive item that i wanted, but it wouldn't let me as my shipping address wasn't in the states. So i was redirected to tigerdirect.CA and they didn't even have the item i wanted!

 

Its the dollar to pound conversion on most products that gets me. Take a look at the pricing for vista in the EU and try to find a reason for the cost difference. Microsoft sure can't, so they just ignore the question.

Gets me really very angry. Why can we sort out this in the EU, but not force big companies like ms to do it as well. At least Sony are taking a beating with the ps3 partly due to their gouging of the EU and AUS customers. Almost makes me proud

 

I recently wanted to purchase a set of PSU connector tools from a web site in the US. They couldn't have weighed more than a couple of hundred grams. $14 before shipping, over $60 after. So I thought, "I've had trouble buying these in the UK. Maye I should buy 10 and flog the rest on ebay." $240 for shipping. F***** jokers.

Thankfully a set turned up on the B-T For Sale forum, so I snapped those up.

 

I think you meant EU?

 

You guys get a 2 year warranty ?

 

No, it means we get 70% and the 2 year warranty

 

No, means we get 130% price of the US and a 2 year warranty.

1 year warranty is law, in fact, I think in the EU it's as much as 6 years if you know the right rules, shops don't tend to advertise this point

 

The difficulty in ordering from abroad is down to the same reason we have several different regions for DVDs: price racketeering. Some markets will put up with higher prices than others; some markets are more competitive than others. Consumers in Asia and the US are best off while we over here in Europe are worse off. Go to Australia, New Zealand and the Third World, and you start to really pay.

Of course this strategy only works if people cannot simply buy where the goods are cheapest. The global market/economy is intended to benefit business, not the consumer... Cheap materials and labour force over there, a wealthy and naive consumer market over there. May the two never meet and compare notes.

To wit:

Apple iPod nano, 8Gb version, Apple store US price: $249,-- (£126,90).
Apple iPod nano, 8Gb version, Apple store UK price: £169,-- ($331,61)
Where did the extra £43,-- ($82,61) come in? Shipping? I don't think so. Both units are made in China. Where (in Hong Kong) they are sold for $243,24 (£123,94).

Production cost for the 8Gb version, by the way, is estimated at about $132,-- (£67,27).

 

I think the EU regulations (which countries may choose to make tighter I think) are: 2 or 3 years warranty BUT after 6 month the customer has to prove to the manufacturer that the thing was broken to start with. I never quite understood it really

Anyways ... amazon.com is one of the good websites ... ordering there actually always worked great no matter if I ordered at .com / .co.uk or .de

On other occasions it has been easier to get something shipped from the UK to Austria than from Germany

 

They certainly don't, a friend called today saying his gf's laptop was dead in the water, 18-month old; PC-World claimed it was out-of-guarantee. I told him to check his consumer rights and ram them down PC-World's throat.

"the customer has to prove to the manufacturer that the thing was broken to start with" - if it's broken for no obvious reason then it must have been faulty to start with, my non-legal take on that. "Fit for purpose" means expect a few years life.

UK prices of US imports have always been high on some things, I've American textbooks from long ago with the printed prices on the back showing a $1 = £1 exchange rate. And they're full of spelling mistakes.

There are a few firms who'll deal cross-Atlantic without ripping you off, but they're rare, and if you end up paying VAT you may still lose out. There are compensations living here that money can't buy.

 

I can certainly identify with the article after living here in Canada. Perhaps it's not as bad as the EU, but it's nowhere near as good as it should be; instead of being just across the border, I might as well be back in India for all the difference it makes in terms of what I can buy and how much it costs.

 

I suppose I could point out, we're not the guys who owe China a zillion bucks for all this imported hardware sold so cheap in some countries.

 

It happens in reverse as well.

the makrolon (sp?) stuff is perfect for the mod I've been designing, but its not available here, and costs an exorbitant amount to ship. most stuff from anywhere out-of-country here in the US seems to cost far too much to ship unless it's from some far-eastern nation.

Given all the trade tariffs on far-eastern goods, shouldn't it be the reverse?

[edit}: I'm just talking shipping costs, not actual unit prices.

 

What a sad truth. Lucky for me, I'm in the US so I don't get screwed by this (but then again, we have Bush, so it balances out, if not goes to your favor).

I wonder what the legality of just making a shipping business would be to deal with this. I'd have to assume it's questionable, seeing what happened to Lik-Sang... but I'm always happy to help out a fellow Bit member

 

rip off prices are all too common
Speaking as someone who just paid 270AUD for 2 APs that are only 49USD each.

though i must say the freight was quick infact it was faster than getting stuff from inside AU

also don't forget the delays that we get
Sony, Microsoft >:\ world wide launch my arse

edit: not so much sony but microsofts 360 was hardly a world wide release.

sony gets the mention mainly for their laptops and previous behaviour