Airport Duty shops and Boarding Passes

Bummer1234

Came across this in the last few days and its seemed to have escalated to people not showing there boarding passes at the Airport shops anymore.

Does anyone know what the irish airports scance is on this?

Link about story

zagmund

It's not the airports stance, it's the retailers stance.

I know that my son trooped off to Boots or (generic newsagent chain) a while back to get something trivial like a packet of Skittles and had to come back to get his boarding card. He wasn't impressed and I wasn't impressed - but then I'm not impressed with much in the retail section in Dublin Airport these days.

I gave up buying pretty much anything in "duty free" a long time ago as the cost/benefit trade off involved in rushed purchases of relatively expensive goods in a relatively high pressure environment just didn't work out. I prefer to buy stuff after researching a bit. Here's a clue - you'll find it hard to get advance notice of prices from most duty free retailers. Try looking at their web sites or contacting them to get a specific price and see how far you get.

z

Bummer1234

zagmund wrote: »

It's not the airports stance, it's the retailers stance.

I meant to say the retailers in the irish airports overall.

Its been always been my belief that i had to show it but reading these stories its not obligatory to show it at all, This has me quite annoyed cause i know the amount of times i have stuck the BP into my bag and it always seems to end at the bottom of the bag!

But my overall question is, Is the retails shops making a extra little profit in the irish airports? Specially for Transatlantic journeys?

Yamanoto

This has been a real bugbear of mine for years & I stopped acceding to the request in LHR a long time back. Being asked to dig out a boarding pass when all you're after is a bottle of water or a Twix has always been an unnecessary inconvenience for pax & now we know the reason why - airport retailers have been coining it by claiming VAT back on purchases by passengers flying beyond the EU, instead of passing that saving on to the chumps coming through their doors.

You can't even check out at WH Smith's self-service tills in DUB T2 without scanning your boarding pass - staff will override the system, but again it's an inconvenience for passengers who shop there in good faith.

The whole thing stinks tbh.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/11794109/The-real-reason-airport-shops-want-to-see-your-boarding-pass.html

keithclancy

Hmm ... In Germany I never have to show my boarding pass buying anything in the Airport.

In Amsterdam is optional and only necessary if buying actual duty free.

Bummer1234

The journal picked up the story and have some words from DAA on it.

Link

Of the website:

The terms and conditions on The Loop – Dublin Airport’s shopping website, also states that a boarding card must be presented when purchasing goods.

Sounds ridiculous!

zagmund

Basically, what they are pulling here is a fast one on the consumer who is destined outside the EU.

If this was the other side of security and you bought your <whatever> for €12.30, then the transaction would be split as follows - customer hands over €12.30, retailer keeps €10.00, retailer submits €2.30 to Revenue. No boarding cards required at all, at all because it's taken that every relevant transaction is liable to VAT. This would happen 100% of the time

On the air side the retailer changes this equation to look like this - customer hands over €12.30, retailer keeps €12.30, retailer submits €0.00 to Revenue, but does in fact account for the sale to Revenue as being VAT exempt (or zero rated, I can't remember which). They need the boarding card *for this transaction* as evidence that the item was going outside the EU.

In a sane world what would be happening is that the retailer tells the customer that their transaction is VAT exempt and only asks them for €10, the customer hands over €10 and is happy to have saved €2.30. This rubbish about "it's complex to administer" is rubbish - tell me the last time you saw a manual till in Dublin airport? The second the till scans the boarding card and identifies that the destination is outside the EU is the second the till should be setting the VAT rate to 0. It's not like some droid has the job of printing everything out at the end of the day and matching flight numbers to destinations to till rolls. It just doesn't happen that way.

The customer is not given the opportunity to pay €10.00 plus €2.30 VAT and then claim their VAT back.

In fact, unless I'm missing something unless the receipt is explicitly marked as being different from the normal receipt I think the customer is entitled to assume that their receipt includes VAT just like all the others and present it for a refund at whatever "get your VAT back" stands there are in the airport. There's no written or verbal indication to the customer that they are not being charged VAT.

z

coylemj

DAA statement just there now, extract below, click on the link for the full statement .....

Within shops operated by daa's ARI subsidiary, we offer a single price to all customers across many product categories, whether they are travelling to a duty paid or to a duty free destination. In this way, we pass on VAT savings for duty free passengers to all of our customers.

http://www.dublinairport.com/gns/at-the-airport/latest-news/15-08-11/daa_Statement_Re_Airport_Shopping.aspx

Tabnabs

It is policy in our stores to ask that passengers present their boarding car when making a purchase, however if any passenger buying a non duty free product and does not wish to provide this information, we will still make the sale.

We shall overcome, brothers and sisters.

animaal

I find magazines in airports to be more expensive than in my local newsagent, and newspapers charged at the RRP (as far as I remember anyway).

On the other hand, don't some of the electrical stores have good prices, for all passengers?

I think I'll be discriminating. If a store either charges a reduced rate for people going to non-EU destinations, or a reduced rate for all customers, I'll be happy enough to show my boarding card. But I won't pay RRP and then show my card.

Celly Smunt

keithclancy wrote: »

Hmm ... In Germany I never have to show my boarding pass buying anything in the Airport.

I always seem to get checked in German airports, Schonefeld seem to pride themselves on it, they really like asking if your connecting too.

dudara

The question that pops into my head around the percentage breakdown of spend between passengers travelling within the EU and passengers travelling outside the EU. That would influence my perception of this practice.

animaal

dudara wrote: »

The question that pops into my head around the percentage breakdown of spend between passengers travelling within the EU and passengers travelling outside the EU. That would influence my perception of this practice.

I would have thought that longer-distance travelers would purchase more.

- they'd have more of an expectation of "duty-free" being good value, regardless of the reality
- they have more hours in the air ahead of them to occupy themselves with reading materials, snacks
- they're less likely to have bought a €9.99 flight, and so purchases may not seem so significant

And even if the percentage of non-EU tickets is small, it's still being pocketed rather than being passed back to the customers.

Louche Lad

You know, if airports did introduce differential pricing, you could get a black market emerging whereby a Kraków-bound passenger could get Chicago-bound passenger to buy bottle of Jameson or an Aran sweater, and split the VAT between them.

animaal

Louche Lad wrote: »

You know, if airports did introduce differential pricing, you could get a black market emerging whereby a Kraków-bound passenger could get Chicago-bound passenger to buy bottle of Jameson or an Aran sweater, and split the VAT between them.

There is already differential pricing in a number of areas, I think alcohol is one of them. I suppose it could be abused!

zagmund

Exactly, you can already do that sort of thing if you want. In reality though, if I was bound for somewhere other than another airport in Ireland it's pretty likely that I could buy whatever it is cheaper when I get there anyway. In other words, a bottle of duty paid vodka in Poland is probably cheaper than a bottle of duty free vodka here.

In some airports they only give you your duty free at the gate of the plane to avoid this sort of thing.

z

jaymcg91

zagmund wrote: »

In some airports they only give you your duty free at the gate of the plane to avoid this sort of thing.

z

Is that why they do that? That makes so much sense!

Bummer1234

jaymcg91 wrote: »

Is that why they do that? That makes so much sense!

Yea they defiantly do that in JFK on the Aer lingus flights.

RainyDay

zagmund wrote: »

I gave up buying pretty much anything in "duty free" a long time ago as the cost/benefit trade off involved in rushed purchases of relatively expensive goods in a relatively high pressure environment just didn't work out. I prefer to buy stuff after researching a bit. Here's a clue - you'll find it hard to get advance notice of prices from most duty free retailers. Try looking at their web sites or contacting them to get a specific price and see how far you get.

DAA are pretty good for showing prices of major purchases on theloop.ie. My other half has used this when planning perfume restocking.

On the broader issue, I wonder if these shops are breaching data protection legislation by looking for information that they don't really need?