Re: Hmmm
> As noted by others, sales tax/VAT makes up a lot of the difference between the US and UK prices. The rest is usually put down to "regionalization"
There are still a lot of items where the US$ price (ex tax) of $N is matched by a UKP price of £N(plus a bit).
In most cases, that's attributable to the UK importers believing they can charge what they want as they have a monopoly - it's been interesting telling them their prices are silly and I can get the same item 30% cheaper from Germany, to have them tell me I can't do that as they have an exclusive distribution deal.
The phrase "single market" and questioning if they're admitting to illegal activities usually has interesting effects.
In one egrarious case (Serverlifts), the UK importer managed to grab EMEA distro rights and was charging an insane markup - resulting in an extremely useful device with reasonable sales volume in the USA being bloody expensive here - to the point that the importer was making a big deal that they'd sold ONE in London (to the met police) and a couple into Australia. (I had a discussion with the manufacturer, suggesting that "exclusive distribution deals" were counterproductive for sales and quite possibly illegal under EU law. The prices demanded by said importer suddenly dropped dramatically)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
