Rip off Britain (as if you didn't know already)

[Alan O]

Thanks for providing the link for folks alan, was tricky for me to do it on my tiddly tab. Yes that's what I checked out. You can get a lot from the east for less than £15. Had some excellent stuff.

Yes indeed, often with amazingly low postage too.

 

[Illaveago]

Try going to Norway. I bought 4 AA batteries, a postcard and a stamp at Tromsø airport and found I had spent all my holiday money.

That reminds me of a maths question from the 60's .

 

[FishFright]

Sorry to do this, but felt the need to post a surprising difference in the price of a bike between US and UK.

I use Chainreactioncycles a fair bit and even though I'm in the US they most often provide the best prices and shipping times. Saying that I was surprised when I researched a new bike, a Nukeproof gravel bike (yes I am that trendy). When I first arrived on the chainreaction page for this bike this is the price I saw...

Nukeproof Digger 1.0 Gravel Bike 2017 £1449.99

and when I changed country and currency...

Nukeproof Digger 1.0 Gravel Bike 2017 $1299.99

That's about a £400 difference, way more than the normal VAT difference I'm used to seeing.

Again, apologies for pointing out something you may already be aware of, but this was a surprising price difference.

Does the U.S price include Sales tax, state tax and all the other taxes they leave off the sticker price ?

 

[vickster]

Does the U.S price include Sales tax, state tax and all the other taxes they leave off the sticker price ?

You don't usually pay those if they are being shipped overseas, only when buying in the US to stay in the US (although some states are exempt on certain stuff like clothing in Massachusetts)

 

[Bodhbh]

It's generally worth checking the prices on one of the German suppliers - Rose, Bike Components, etc. For whatever reason - scale?! - they often seem to be much cheaper on some imports. I recently bough a Surly Troll frameset: $650 in the US, £750 from Tredz/Triton/etc in the UK, 520 Euros from Bike Components.

 

[Alan O]

It's generally worth checking the prices on one of the German suppliers - Rose, Bike Components, etc. For whatever reason - scale?! - they often seem to be much cheaper on some imports. I recently bough a Surly Troll frameset: $650 in the US, £750 from Tredz/Triton/etc in the UK, 520 Euros from Bike Components.

Curiously, in different product areas, I've found ordering direct from German suppliers to often be significantly cheaper than from UK suppliers, even including shipping. I'd expect UK dealers, who import from Germany in bulk, to be cheaper. VAT is almost exactly the same (20% UK, 19% Germany), so that wouldn't account for it.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

I do a lot of ebay buying for work (yes I'm cheap!). China is cheaper than everyone, and I heard somewhere the Chinese authorities subsidise the postage.
Things like monitor arms are cheaper from Germany than the UK, where a £60 item will be sold at £400. Barcode scanners which have less life expectancy than a WW1 fighter pilot in our factory are £65 from Bulgaria, but £200+ in the UK.

Off on a tangent for a mo, I get all the IT equipment used off ebay. Up to four year old bombproof i5 Dell Optiplex for £99. Dell 22" monitors for £75 (new I think they're a few hundred). Network switches are always new and servers less than a year old. As long as I have a backup regime tighter than a ducks' botty all is good.
Factory scanpoints are £50-£65 for a HP Thin Client that's £250 new. The old shape monitors for those are skip fodder and I pick them up for £10.
IT supply firms take me off their call lists when I tell them about my strategy.

Edit#1 - It's not 'all' cos the switches are new - but hey I type faster than my brain works!