UK Tech pricing

[Trefonica]

Note to users -

UK pricing is not overly expensive compared to the straight exchange from USD to GBP. 

UK pricing always contains 20% sales tax

American prices almost never does

Just wanted to make this known as many people are ignorant of this and think British people have it bad / British people think USA gets really cheap parts.

They don't. 

 

E.g

 

MSI 1050 ti @ amazon.com = $139.99

MSI 1050 ti @ amazon.co.uk = £139.99

GBP to USD @ time of writing = 1.24

 

$139.99 > £113.32

£113.32 x 1.20 = £136

 

I wouldn't lose sleep over £5 guys.

Just wanted to make this known, was irritating me a bit.

[rn8686]

Calm down, dont get so agitated over nothing. Why does this matter? 

[Trefonica]

The upper case bit was just to make sure people read it haha wasn't shouting

[Guest]

Until you go to Currys/PC World for it.

[Trefonica]

Or Maplin. They charge £299 for a 970 

[rn8686]

2 minutes ago, Trefonica said:

The upper case bit was just to make sure people read it haha wasn't shouting

But this post doesnt really have a point? Its just to say that UK pricing isnt worse than US. 

[Trefonica]

The point is that lots of people don't know that UK pricing contains 20% tax and US pricing doesn't. I didn't even know until I was shocked at checkout in the US.

[porina]

Everything is still in the air after Brexit, but certainly before that there were bigger gaps. It just doesn't look as big any more now the exchange rates have got a lot worse.

[ThinkWithPortals]

Yeah, the physical store pricing in the UK is insane. I saw a 2GB stick of DDR3 for £29.99 in PC World once. At that point it's practically theft.

 

Severe lack of enthusiast stores as well. You know, the kind that sell high-end components, gaming gear, etc. The only one I know of is Box in Birmingham.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

Yeah, the physical store pricing in the UK is insane. I saw a 2GB stick of DDR3 for £29.99 in PC World once. At that point it's practically theft.

 

Severe lack of enthusiast stores as well. You know, the kind that sell high-end components, gaming gear, etc. The only one I know of is Box in Birmingham.

OCUK, Scan, Aria PC etc. have brick and mortar stores, but yeh there's very few. 

 

Well, they each have one lol

[paddy-stone]

As @porina mentioned it is actually a lot closer gap now because of the bad exchange rates right now due to brexit. a few months ago even it was much more of a difference in pricing. And it depends on the tech in question, how old it is, as they like to fleece customers that want tech when first released, then it may drop in price a bit after a few months.

[System Error Message]

ofcourse its fine when the difference is 20% but the problem however is when the difference is 50% or more. There are huge discrepancies in pricing as even linus has covered in one video about GPU reviews as one factor was the price to performance but many were selling higher than the suggested price. What really makes the difference is that in the US you can find places that sell below retail whereas in the UK you will never find that.

 

Aside from currency changes to find an item that is only 20% different is very difficult as you will expect to spend 50% more rather because of inefficiencies (yes many businesses claim its expensive to run and so on so i call them inefficient regardless if they lie or not).

 

Essentially the price difference is down to 3 things

1) taxes

2) inefficiencies (apparently the british cant seem to efficiently run a business, dont ask me why they, always complain of things being more expensive to run when the US has newegg for instance selling at lower than retail)

3) greed (some items really arent available as a local UK product and are imported at much higher prices, even though all items are imported)

 

When an item is sold in the UK it shouldnt be more than 20% difference in price. Inefficiencies shouldnt be an issue because all tech is imported from the same source, it doesnt go to the US than to the UK it comes straight from the source but a lot of people price it that way because it still makes importing not an option and they can. The other thing that also makes it seem expensive is if you compare the purchasing power too.

 

I've heard of apple pricing a lot higher in the UK and they say its because of currency and operating cost but truthfully apple hardware is made in china and than shipped directly to the countries which is than distributed to local apple stores. When i say a lot higher i mean much much higher but apple does it to the whole world.