Hacked off with getting ripped off?
26 August 2008
No-one can credibly explain why products cost so much more in the UK. This woman is taking a stand and just not paying!
Believe it or not, but on a recent trip to the US, I went shopping! I bought some Reebok trainers for less than £30.00. At the time, the pound was stronger against the dollar, but still I couldn’t help wondering how on earth they cost less than they do at home, as they are made in the UK. So even with shipping costs to the UK, the British-made products cost more when they account for more greenhouse emissions being freighted around the world.
I wandered around the music shops as well. CDs are dollar-for-pound, so if a CD is £9.99 in the UK, it can be bought for $9.99, or less than £7 in the US. Even if the CD is a British artist signed to a UK record label.
I did once ask a CEO about pricing discrepancies around the world, usually at the expense of the UK consumer. He waffled on about the cost of shipping, manufacture in different countries, the costs associated with retail in various countries; wages, rental costs, blah, blah, blah. Yet this does not explain if a CD for example, is produced in the UK, how it can be sold for more in the UK, than it costs to buy in say Italy, where the extra cost to transport it over there must be factored in. The simple fact is, it doesn’t cost more for goods to remain in the country of origin, it is down to what the economy or the buying public will stomach.
An iPhone in the US costs $199 or roughly £120, when you add on the state tax. Here, it costs £199. Similarly, iTunes’ songs cost more to download here than in the UK, why? It’s still data being downloaded, the artist still only gets a few pence per download so it’s not that we are more generous in supporting the arts in this country. They charge what they can get away with. This is why Hayes Major and Minor cringe when I tell a shopkeeper he can poke his Cornetto which now costs £3 in a hot spell – I’m not paying that much and I don’t care how inconvenient that is to the shopkeeper or my family. I think more people should question the cost of things and walk away when they are over-priced.
The worst example of this is the Tesla Roadster, a smashing looking electric sports car. It is very popular in Silicon Valley, cool design and with green credentials. In the Menlo Park showroom it has a price tag of $100,000 – phew, but think of the savings in petrol costs. At around $1.80 to the pound, that’s about £55,500. A lot of money, granted, but not as much as some good-looking and ‘worthy’ models. When Tesla launched the Roadster in the UK, the price tag was £92,000 ! And it is made in this country ! (Well, it’s an odd system; the Roadster is based on a Lotus Elise, so part-made in Norfolk, then shipped to America for the fitting of the electric drivetrain and battery packs, and then back to the UK for final assembly.)
That price, around £36,000 more than Silicon Valley residents pay, is really going to spur Britain on to buy one to save the planet, isn’t it? How can this price differential be justified? It can’t, quite simply. And the people who buy the Tesla Roadster and any other over-priced products are mugs – sorry, but you are. Why should it cost more to be environmentally responsible here? The UK taxes on cars add up of course, but not to nearly 50 per cent surcharge. If the roles were reversed... well, they wouldn’t be, would they? In a land where ‘the dollar is king’ customers know they have the upper hand; they have want the vendor wants, i.e. money. Perhaps more customers should realise they have the upper hand here too. Otherwise, it’s a shame that we might not benefit from the electronics advances that can improve our lives and our environment. However, we should not be held to ransom, nor should we be excluded because we can’t / won’t pay over-inflated prices.
Unfortunately, this does not help the UK electronics industry to grow and boom, but I can’t be held responsible for that. I know mine is only a unilateral, belligerent stance, but I like to think it’s a start...
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