The atlantic divide - electronics prices.

[uberlad]

How come electronics are so much cheaper in the US than in Europe? I'm used to the cost in £ to have the same number as the cost in $ (ie £99 & $99) but in some cases it's getting beyond a joke.

My case in point here is the Archos Recorder 20, last years flagship mp3 jukebox from Archos. It's not as small or as cool as an iPod, but I just need reasonable portability.

In the UK I can find it for about £200 with VAT.

In the US it's been discounted by Amazon to £70 . Maybe £100 without the mail in rebate.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000T1R4O/qid=1078830328/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-3435579-3881713?v=glance&s=electronics

But will they deliver to the UK? Will they heck!

Moan, moan, b*tch, complain. etc.

Uberlad

[UtwigMU]

- Smaller market, despite EU, it still doesn't function as united market as far as consumers are concerned.

Would you buy hardware/electronics in Germany/order online in some other European country if it were cheaper?

- Companies maintain a representative in every major european country - language barriers, established prior to EU, if they'd close them, consumers would feel as the company is not paying them attention. (higher costs of distribution)

- Higher taxes.

- People put up with it.

And UK is still cheaper than here, so quit whining.

[uberlad]

I'd buy from anywhere as long as I got the same product. I'm not very picky and as far as I can see the power brick is autoswitching to different voltages.

I shall quit my foul whining and get back to wishing that eBay users would all be struck with network outages long enough for me to get a bargain

Uberlad

[az]

Isn't archos even a french company?

AZ

[uberlad]

I believe that they are. Maybe I'll get lucky on holiday this year and find that France is overrun with them.....

Uberlad

[Tjalfe]

I still think we should have a MURC shopping club where someone in the states can buy for us and ship to the rest of the world as presents, avoiding import duties and such .. leaving them a tip for the trouble

[efty]

Is there a company dealing with pc hardware that has a webshop and can ship in Europe? (including Cyprus).
Israel is closer so shipping costs should be less, but I did not manage to find one.

[Wombat]

Originally posted by tjalfe
I still think we should have a MURC shopping club where someone in the states can buy for us and ship to the rest of the world as presents, avoiding import duties and such .. leaving them a tip for the trouble

Quiet now....we would <I>never</I> do something like that. It would be <I>illegal</I>.

[Tjalfe]

Originally posted by Wombat
Quiet now....we would <I>never</I> do something like that. It would be <I>illegal</I>.

It was just a suggestion I would NEVER break the law .. on purpose that is.

So would it still be illegal to send stuff so it gets declared?.. in some cases it would still pay off.

[uberlad]

I doubt that customs would be too harsh if we weren't obviously doing it for personal gain, or sending ten packages a day.

Anyway, we're all friends here - if a MURCer leant another MURCer some money, and as a gesture of thanks was bought a gift there would be nothing illegal going on Friends buy eachother gifts all the time. And borrow money through Paypal. Or something.

I'm hoping that my ex boss will be coming to the country on business soon - she can smuggle one in for me.

Uberlad

[The PIT]

Apart from shipping costs it's companies been greedy and a lack of competition.

[UtwigMU]

efty, wait till EU kicks in, don't expect it right on May 1st though.

[SpiralDragon]

unfortunatly here in leb prices are high.. qulity of products is low.... i have a distinct feeling that all factory regected products end up here.... i made a benshmarck comparison between 2 WD drives of the same model.. one bought here.. the other from the USA.... the one from here reported transfer rates in the xxxKB range while the one form the USA gave transfer rates in the xxMB range... cant remeber the details but ever since then i only order my parts form out side... even if they cost more.... needles to say no one sels matrox cards here ever since the G400 days.. not even the Max version... and there is only one company that sels M video cards like the X100 and x10s but way to over priced....


one DAW place that i usualy buy my audio stuf from was selling Matrox G450s back in the days when the G550 was out (he was the sole exception and besides he is not a computer reseler he is an audio reseler) the card he told me was priced for somthing like $400 when even with getting the damns thing shiped here it cost me $200 tops..... his reply was that matrox had some "special" softwar for DAW PC worksations.... ?!?!? i did not take his word for it but just to be on the safe side i found no mention of such "software"..... and that is just one example

so i am going to be soooo happy when i get to canada.... even with taxes in the range of 14%-20% 2 things are for sure
1. the price would be still less than leb
2. the qulity would defently be better

so till then no upgrads for me

[borat]

As PIT says the problem over here is not that taxes are obsenely high(although to be fair they are) but that companies rightly think that they can rip off european consumers. Take a panasonic plasma display, in the UK the latest ones are £2400 at the very best price you can get on the internet, in the US $2600. I dont know why europeans put up with it, personally if i want electrical items, i either find a supplier who will ship to the UK or go on ebay, which also invariably ends up with parcels arriving without customs looking at them, if enough people in this backward continent actually stood up to what amounts to corporate cartels then we would see a 20% reduction in most prices. And if you think the EU is ever going to do anything about it then think again, i'd place a lot of money on most of the decision-makers being paid handsome sums not to take action, and also having the threat of a fwe multinationals relocating their industries elsewhere if price regulation were threatened. Thats the price you have to pay for not actually producing any goods which the rest of the world wants in your homeland, your a slave to the economies who show a little enterprise.

[Kurt]

It's not the resellers the problem, it's the manufacturers.

They have a nicely divided zone where they don't allow, say official German distributors (or wholesalers -whichever you call it) to resell Italian products.

So what happens is this: you're a reseller/shop that wants to sell abit of everything. You need to go shopping both in Germany and Italy. That's twice the shipping costs right there.

Now, the trick with the official distribution is this: they won't sell to companies outside of their country. That means that if you want to do business with them you have to find another intermediary (that you of course pay for its services) or setup a local branch.

IMHO these distribution contracts are totally illegal (in the view of EU's free circulation of goods act).

Now you tell me what the problem is for manufacturers to ship equipment in different languages? I don't think logistics is really an issue since we're talking about really big companies with centralized manufacturing (Taiwan anyone?) that already ship thousands to millions of units per annum to various countries...

You also explain to me why the prices are so different from country to country in the EU zone (same import tariffs, without VAT)...