Is this insane or what?

[Jimjam66]

I wanted a couple of sierra stylus pens:

Choice 1: Axminster, £7.50 each plus shipping (currently £1 but usually a fiver).

Choice 2: Timberbits, $6.50 (roughly £3.30) plus $5 (roughly £2.60) shipping.

Forgetting for minute that shipping stays fixed no matter how big your order is (or yes, Mr. Smart Aleck, that both offer free shipping over a certain amount), that means that I can order ONE pen kit from a supplier 9,443 miles away CHEAPER than I can order it from a supplier 105 miles away ...

I may be naive but how the h*ll can that be????

Anyone who says TB kits are lower quality hasn't been living on this planet very long. there is no rational explanation.

:nonono::nonono::nonono::nonono:

 

[ray7]

Rip off Britain.

Ray

 

[Tephy]

Do you have to pay tax/import duty?

 

[TaylorsMirfield.co.uk]

One reason would be that the shipping costs from Taiwan or China to Australia is considerably cheaper than to the UK. Our import duty and tax adds another 25%to the price. As an importer of large quantities of kits it would be foolish to try and dodge the duty but some do. Also for some reason their delivery is far better value for money.

 

[donwatson]

It does seem that something is out of kilter here

 

[paulm]

It baffles me as well David

 

[bassethound]

It's just Britain as it is now, rip off the British and give it all away to all the other countries..

 

[Jim]

The damn UK overheads and taxes cause us the higher price ..

 

[Walter]

There is also the question of volume discounts. Axminster supply primarily in the UK. TB supply worldwide so probably buying in larger volumes.

 

[PhillH]

They do have higher markups on stuff than other retailers, guess why ? Go in any average Axi store, see how much square footage there is and how many staff versus the hundreds of customers in at any one time Rent, Rates, lighting, heating etc.

Who is paying for that ? We are.

TB presumably do not have the large staff numbers, nor the network of stores to rent, ergo, cheaper prices.

I did the same in the Scuba business a while back, pissed a lot of people off, but funnily enough not the customers

 

[Penpal]

I tend to enjoy leaving the business side to the seller far more interested in the final result. There were people in Australia saying they were ripped of cause international freight was cheaper than our Aussie postal rates. Just saying hard to please everyone including me. You can only imagine in the UK when in the early days of penmaking here everything had to go the roundabout through the US with our exchange rates in the lousy stage the humble Slimline cost so much more then than it does now.

Peter.

 

[wm460]

All those things you mention about Uk apply here, where we are robbed blind for every thing.:nonono::nonono::nonono: