Rip Off Republic (yet again!!)

BoozyBabe

Just needed to post this.

2 weeks ago I was in NI & I went into the electrical goods store, Currys. There I saw a laptop & decided to buy it.
My credit card bill stated it cost me €585.

Yesterday I was in Blanch, & again I decided to take a stroll into Currys.
There was my lovely little laptop.
Same model, same spec, same store.
It was on sale for €799

Why oh why should it cost me €214 more to buy an identical model from an identical store, only on opposite sides of the border????

That cr@p p!sses me off!
Imagine how p!ssed off I'd have been if the order of my journeys were reversed.

I live on the border, so I'm used to shopping in the North. I've seen this many many times. Argos are very guilty of this, but I've never seen anything as bad as €214 in the difference!!!

What ye guys think?

(Don't tell me it was a different spec laptop. I work in IT, I know it's the same laptop)

Rob_l

its a different spec laptop!


No its not, there isn't any explanation as far as i can see except us people south of the border like to be robbed it makes us feel superior to pay more for goods than anyone else


and we like to make the rich richewr while making ourselves poorer

so its win win

inspiron77

That huge different is not acceptable. They just want to make money.

Rob_l

how much was the laptop in sterling?

CiaranC

inspiron77 wrote:

They just want to make money.

The cheek!

Its called the free market. Get over it.

Lump

Because people in the South will pay that much and not question it.

BoozyBabe

Rob_l wrote:

how much was the laptop in sterling?

£399stg

Beano

Perhaps it was on sale 2 weeks ago but it isnt now?

randomname2005

BoozyBabe wrote:

Just needed to post this.

2 weeks ago I was in NI & I went into the electrical goods store, Currys. There I saw a laptop & decided to buy it.
My credit card bill stated it cost me €585.

Yesterday I was in Blanch, & again I decided to take a stroll into Currys.
There was my lovely little laptop.
Same model, same spec, same store.
It was on sale for €799

Why oh why should it cost me €214 more to buy an identical model from an identical store, only on opposite sides of the border????

That cr@p p!sses me off!
Imagine how p!ssed off I'd have been if the order of my journeys were reversed.

I live on the border, so I'm used to shopping in the North. I've seen this many many times. Argos are very guilty of this, but I've never seen anything as bad as €214 in the difference!!!

What ye guys think?

(Don't tell me it was a different spec laptop. I work in IT, I know it's the same laptop)

Firstly, the vat rate in Ireland is higher than that in the UK. Only an extra 4% but adding 4% to the NI price brings it to €608.
Next, the minimum wage in Ireland is greater than that of the UK (€8.65 as opposed to €7.86 at todays exchange rate)
Thirdly we all know that property in Ireland is very expensive, ergo renting a commercial property is also very expensive and this will be taken into account when pricing a good.
I dont have exact figures for them, but if what the media tells us is correct, the prices of electricity, phone etc are also more expensive over here.

Yes, Ireland is an expensive country to live in, but some of these costs are justified. To avoid paying high prices, simply do as you did - shop around and look for the best price. There will always be a fool willing to pay over the odds so shops will try and charge the highest possible price.

Edit: We also like paying high prices down south to show how well off/how much debt we have.

challengemaster

in china atm, it costs anything from 2-5euro to go ~40mins in a taxi..

everything is piss cheap, and it gets better, _every_ price (almost) is negociable.

BoozyBabe

Beano wrote:

Perhaps it was on sale 2 weeks ago but it isnt now?

Don't think this is the case.

There was no 'On Sale' signs on the one I bought.
It had a label on it: "Save £100" & in small writing:- was 499, now 399.

In Blanch, the very same thing:- "Save €100", was 899, now 799.

Bought a printer a few years back in Argos & there was €50 in the difference.
I thought THAT was bad at the time.

There is absolutely NO excuse for this & it's absolutely ridiculous, imo.
Just glad I'm in a position to shop in the North.

Rob_l

randomname2005 wrote:

Firstly, the vat rate in Ireland is higher than that in the UK. Only an extra 4% but adding 4% to the NI price brings it to €608.
Next, the minimum wage in Ireland is greater than that of the UK (€8.65 as opposed to €7.86 at todays exchange rate)
Thirdly we all know that property in Ireland is very expensive, ergo renting a commercial property is also very expensive and this will be taken into account when pricing a good.
I dont have exact figures for them, but if what the media tells us is correct, the prices of electricity, phone etc are also more expensive over here.

Yes, Ireland is an expensive country to live in, but some of these costs are justified. To avoid paying high prices, simply do as you did - shop around and look for the best price. There will always be a fool willing to pay over the odds so shops will try and charge the highest possible price.

Edit: We also like paying high prices down south to show how well off/how much debt we have.

this is all true plus we pay a lower tax on our income so there is a balancing act in cost of goods and higher wages bla bla bla

BoozyBabe

Yes, that's a valid point, but are you telling me that you'd be happy paying an extra €214 for the same item in the same chain of stores just because you feel they've to cover bigger expenses?

Does no one think that an extra €214 is very very EXTREME?

godtabh

BoozyBabe wrote:

Just needed to post this.

2 weeks ago I was in NI & I went into the electrical goods store, Currys. There I saw a laptop & decided to buy it.
My credit card bill stated it cost me €585.

Yesterday I was in Blanch, & again I decided to take a stroll into Currys.
There was my lovely little laptop.
Same model, same spec, same store.
It was on sale for €799

Why oh why should it cost me €214 more to buy an identical model from an identical store, only on opposite sides of the border????

That cr@p p!sses me off!
Imagine how p!ssed off I'd have been if the order of my journeys were reversed.

I live on the border, so I'm used to shopping in the North. I've seen this many many times. Argos are very guilty of this, but I've never seen anything as bad as €214 in the difference!!!

What ye guys think?

(Don't tell me it was a different spec laptop. I work in IT, I know it's the same laptop)

Was the laptop in the north on sale by any chance?

Slow Motion

randomname2005 wrote:

Firstly, the vat rate in Ireland is higher than that in the UK. Only an extra 4% but adding 4% to the NI price brings it to €608.
Next, the minimum wage in Ireland is greater than that of the UK (€8.65 as opposed to €7.86 at todays exchange rate)
Thirdly we all know that property in Ireland is very expensive, ergo renting a commercial property is also very expensive and this will be taken into account when pricing a good.
I dont have exact figures for them, but if what the media tells us is correct, the prices of electricity, phone etc are also more expensive over here.

Yes, Ireland is an expensive country to live in, but some of these costs are justified. To avoid paying high prices, simply do as you did - shop around and look for the best price. There will always be a fool willing to pay over the odds so shops will try and charge the highest possible price.

Edit: We also like paying high prices down south to show how well off/how much debt we have.

Free market economy ! We did it to ourselves so we're stuck with it until we change the situation ! Plus if it wasn't so expensive here we would only have the weather to complain about ! On the bright side you got a good deal OP so you can indulge in our second favourite passtime (according to some), smugness. Go figure !

randomname2005

BoozyBabe wrote:

Yes, that's a valid point, but are you telling me that you'd be happy paying an extra €214 for the same item in the same chain of stores just because you feel they've to cover bigger expenses?

Does no one think that an extra €214 is very very EXTREME?

I'm not saying I would be happy to pay the extra, everyone wants to buy things as for as low a price as possible. But there are reasons why the laptop costs more over here.

BoozyBabe, I'm not disagreeing with you from a fundamental perspective, 36% does seem extreme, but unless we have a breakdown of the costs associated with selling the laptop and the profit that is made on each laptop in both countries then we cannot judge. The store up north may be using it as a Loss-Leader, or the local Aldi/Lidl/other electrical store had laptops on sale at that particular time and they had to reduce their price to compete with local competition.

The last time I was in wales I was looking at the price of rugby jerseys, and when the currency conversion was taken into account, there was only one or two euros between the price and in some shops it was dearer than the price in Ireland. While certain goods and services may be cheaper, it is not always the case.

Dyr

plain hang sangich in galway train station...5 euros 10 cents :mad:

randomname2005

Bambi wrote:

plain hang sangich in galway train station...5 euros 10 cents :mad:

Did you buy it or are you just quoting the price?

Dyr

I bought three!!!

I'll check the bleedin price first the next time

randomname2005

Bambi wrote:

I bought three!!!

I'll check the bleedin price first the next time

When the person at the counter told you the price you had the option of walking away and not taking them, as I said earlier, people have the ability to shop around for better prices.

(Were they nice? )

Dyr

The one i had was nice, but it wasnt five euro nice.

Anyway i had no choice, the other lads were hank marvin and we had a train to catch. These dastardly train station shops know the score :mad:

zuutroy

We're rich, rich I tells ya.....thats the only reason....different country, different economy, different prices.

randomname2005

Bambi wrote:

The one i had was nice, but it wasnt five euro nice.

Anyway i had no choice, the other lads were hank marvin and we had a train to catch. These dastardly train station shops know the score :mad:

But officer, a big boy told me to do it. :rolleyes: In the absence of a disease such as diabetes which requires food to control blood sugar, you could have said no and gone hungry for a few hours if it meant that much to you.

Again, like with BoozyBabe, I dont disagree with you - €5.10 is very expensive for a sambo BUT BUT BUT you didnt have to buy it. If people stopped buying sambos from this shop then they would have to reduce their prices.

zuutroy wrote:

different country, different economy, different prices.

L1011

Theres a lot less money sloshing around the north (not that most of the money down here isn't borrowed but still) so they can't get away with charging insane prices. People down here can afford to not be arsed looking around for a 20 euro saving, and the shops have taken that to give them carte blanche to add huge margins across the board.

Some stuff is actually far, far cheaper in the west/north west (DIY stuff for instance) for precisely the same reason.

Slow Motion

2 hang sanguidges and 2 pints of hino, de gaul ariport Paris = €29 euro :eek:
Fortunately my boss was paying

zuutroy

Slow Motion wrote:

2 hang sanguidges and 2 pints of hino, de gaul ariport Paris = €29 euro :eek:
Fortunately my boss was paying

Paris is a joke. I was in a restaurant there last week and had and 'XL' Cheeseburger, (think McDonalds cheeseburger), that came with no more than a handful of chips, and a coke (flat with no ice) and it came to 22 quid (the coke alone was 8).

Ridiculous!

arybvtcw0eolkf

Just back from Amsterdam and thought that was one mad expensive place.

Charged €23- for two Falafals and cokes in one place.

And on Dam square was charged €6- for a coffee

Most bar's the beer was anywhere from €4:50 to €7- and the other half got a Bailey's for €9- :eek:

I think the dearest I've paid for a beer was €9- in Beirut.

patrickolee

Did you try and haggle the price in Dublin? The one and only time I bought a new laptop from one of those places, I made sure the sales man knew I had been to the rival computer seller next door and got 50 E knocked off, with free norton antivirus and a wireless card (worth about 150) thrown in. You'd think high street store like that wouldn't haggle.... but they do, and you must. All it took was walking in and out of the two stores around three times, to get them each to lower their prices. The sales guys are on commission.

arybvtcw0eolkf

patrickolee wrote:

Did you try and haggle the price in Dublin? The one and only time I bought a new laptop from one of those places, I made sure the sales man knew I had been to the rival computer seller next door and got 50 E knocked off, with free norton antivirus and a wireless card (worth about 150) thrown in. You'd think high street store like that wouldn't haggle.... but they do, and you must. All it took was walking in and out of the two stores around three times, to get them each to lower their prices. The sales guys are on commission.

I haggled €5k off the price of my last car.

Got the guy down from €29,950 to €25,000

I do the same in most electrical stores and find most will haggle.

Rob_l

Mairt wrote:

Just back from Amsterdam and thought that was one mad expensive place.

Charged €23- for two Falafals and cokes in one place.

And on Dam square was charged €6- for a coffee

Most bar's the beer was anywhere from €4:50 to €7- and the other half got a Bailey's for €9- :eek:

I think the dearest I've paid for a beer was €9- in Beirut.

them falafal shops rip off tourists they know your too stoned to argue so charge what they like

they have tried this on me on previous trips and i kindly informt em i will call the policia and have them charged with robbery

they then get nice

magick

blah blah this cost that, that costs this.

Dont get me wrong complaing , nice way to vent, but why not vent at the crappy shop giving u shi**y prices?!

Or just refuse to buy it and go somewhere else.

Or complain to the shop/manager