Subject:
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Re: Fixing the world (was Re: Ldraw cannon
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 8 Dec 1998 22:00:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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2106 times
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> We need strict enforcement of exising law, not regulations that shield
> companies. Minimum standards always turn out to be a shield that
> companies hide behind, they compete to hit the minimum, just barely.
Regulations that shield companies.......
Sounds familiar, and one of the biggest impediments to customers getting
a fair deal in the shops here in the UK and Europe.
Consumer goods cost more in the UK than in our competitor's shops. For
instance, and this is the most galling, I could go to the States, buy
any item of clothing from, say, Aquascutum or Burberry's, bring them back
and pay the VAT at customs, and still save money, a lot of money. 30% or
more...
The silhouette agreement?.... most insidious thing to happen in recent
years.
Levi's jeans, available from select shops and Levi's own at phenomenally
high
prices. Tesco and other supermarkets, using parallel import, bring them in,
sell
them at half the price, still make a healthy profit, but have been stopped.
Levi's
took them to the European court, forced them to stop selling them! "Tesco
does not
fit in with the image Levi's wishes to portray!" 90% of Tesco customers wear
the
f*&"£ng things!!! Motorcycles another example. Parallel importers have
become so
successful that they forced the manufacturers to lower prices substantially
in
order to compete. The importers will now be taken to court and with the
Silhouette
as the dangerous precedent, will most likely shut them down and enable them
to
raise prices.
Cars are another horrendous example. Could pop over the channel to France,
order a
UK-built car, to UK specifications (including right-hand drive) and pay a
deposit.
Pop back a few weeks later (delivery times, etc.) and pay off the balance,
drive it
back over the channel, have a few verification checks, etc. The cost? A
couple of
days spent researching, a couple more going back and forth to France, and
one could
save 1000's and 1000's.
CD's too. We pay for them, like everything else, in pounds what our
Americans would
pay in dollars....(a cd costs 14 pounds here, and 14 dollars there.....).
Big
Parliamentary hearings about it, but no real result. More sales of CD's, but
base
price still to high. The Record Labels said we were paying for the
investment in
new talent. Bollocks. As usual, the UK consumer is subsidising the rest of
the
world's cheaper prices.
The solution? Who knows. Too much public apathy. "Oh its always been this
way....."
The apathy gets in the way of organising any kind of useful boycott of any
particular
product. Too many who can afford it will buy it at the inflated price.
Stupid manufacturers know this too. Because enough people will buy something
more
expensive, they might as well rake in the profits. Why reduce across the
board
prices by 20%?? "uhhhh, 20% less profit??" NO!!!!! 30, 40, 50% more
sales!!!! More
profit! Higher turnovers!!!
Lego is also very expensive comparitively speaking by the way......
_____________________________________________________________
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Message has 1 Reply:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Fixing the world (was Re: Ldraw cannon
|
| <F3KMny.FDD@lugnet.com> <F3Lxqn.GrG@lugnet.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "Moz (Chris Moseley)" wrote: Deliberately inflammatory reply by me follows.. (...) That's claptrap. Normal people are (...) (25 years ago, 7-Dec-98, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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