ThinkMountain (Spain)

Roch & Run

I ordered these from the above site and they are having them sent over from DMM in Wales to Spain and then shi9pping them to me in England. The £8 (12.80€) includes the cost of UPSing them back to the UK.

I used Rock + Run as an example but the £16 they charge is about average for the Bulldog.

How can they justify charging 100% more than they cost me in Spain?

Market forces John. If more people follow your example the cost here will come down.

Can't think of any tax (other than VAT which would be charged in Spain anyway) on UK climbing gear.

Just checked out WC friends which cost about the same as here in the UK so the above doesn't apply to all items!?!

Alternatively, the industry will threaten to sue the companies selling stuff cheaper. Apparently, some major british music industry corporations are attempting to sue CD-WOW.com because they sell CDs cheap to UK customers (the CDs are imported from HK), and they're a little sore that people have realised that they don't actually need to pay £16 for a new album when they can get it for almost half the price.

They don't seem to understand that if they didn't rip us off, then we wouldn't need to go else where to buy stuff.

Shopping Europe-wide for products is a damn good idea now it's so easy on the internet. I bought my bike tyres from Germany for about 2/3rds what they cost here

This is a problem though isn't it.

We are fortunate that we can look on t'internet for bargains, but a lot of the population doesn't have that opportunity. Thus a lot of people are forced to pay top whack shop prices for things.

Rip off Britain. Yes indeed John. Remember them saying that CD prices will come down? Like that happened. Look at DVD prices. ARE they really THAT much more to produce than a video but we are daft enough to pay the extra OR in a position where we can't avoid paying it?

Thing is though, if price fixing does go on in the UK with manufacturers forcing the prices high then we will end up with no retail industry at all in the end. I tend to buy most of my stuff online and having to wait a couple of extra days and get the stuff from mainland Europe is not a problem for me.

The ability to shop around on the internet has hurt local shops, widening your net will hurt UK retailers in general. Perhaps the retailers in the UK should collectively tell the manufacturers

Who remembers the Levi Jeans fiasco when Tesco were selling their jeans cheap, didn't Tesco's win?

AFAIK, the process of physically producing DVDs is actually cheaper than VHS tapes - there's less moving parts, so the manufacturing process is less complicated.

I know a few people who are worried about shopping online - they think it's either a) insecure, when it's actually safer/more secure to shop online with reputable companies than it is to use you card in a shop (where more than 1 stranger can see your card, and your details are sent over an unencrypted, insecure line) - especially since there's so much protection offered by CC companies against online fraud now; or b) as soon as they submit their details online to a shop, they'll be sold to thousands of porn/spam/direct mailing/etc companies; or c) They'll be hounded by perverts/bangcok lady boys as soon as they even log onto the internet; or d) all of the above.

It's a real shame, 'cos there's so much money to be saved online.

Britain rips us off for everything. Havent cd's gone UP reacently or is that just me. The thing that bugs me is britain is a small insignificant island that is quite possible one of the most expensive places to live but everyone says its still so great. Its the 51st bloody state!

Thanks for the site John, mite be using it in thwe future!

The fact is that they say prices are going up to cover the cost of ripping downloads from t'internet...

But people do that cos CD's cost so bloody much.

Chicken and egg.

Most people will have seen these sites, but if you want cheap CDs/DVDc, have a look at:

http://www.play.com - Region 1 (US/Canada) and Region 2 (UK/Europe) DVDs. Pretty cheap, and reliable.

http://www.cd-wow.com - CDs, R1 and 2 DVDs. Very cheap CDs (£8.99 for most new releases, £6.99 for some other stuff), some incredibly cheap DVDs. Great site.

http://www.ezydvd.com.au - Region 4 (Australia). Very cheap, very reliable - Disks posted from Aus, so possible hassle (charges for VAT - 17.5% and Customs duties - a further 3.5%, for anything over the £18 personal import limit (£36 if it's a "gift")) from customs.

http://www.futureent.com - Region 1 & 2, pretty cheap, fairly reliable.

Those are the sites I use most frequently for DVDs.

I read somewhere (Guardian Unlimited I think but a rapid search didn't find it) earlier this year that while dowloading of music had hit singles sales, it appeared to helped build the increase in Album sales.

Argument was basically that people are downloading tracks to get a feeling for the album, effectively a try before you buy. This has led to consumers sampling wider ranges of styles, and so buying more cds.

However, whether or not this is actually the case who can say, although I did find that album sales in 2002 reached a record high of 221.6m units so something is goign right for the record companies....

they're very short sighted tho', if CDs were cheaper, I wouldn't cop......... ahem, create back up copies!! ;-)

One still would make the back-ups though, it's better to keep the back-ups for the car and the originals carefully stored at room temperature in the house.
Allegedly.

having spent most the day on kazaa, i would download less if the cd shops stocked the bands i was after!