$750 for an XPS13? In the UK they start at ÂŁ850 - call it $1275 - which even with 20% sales tax would be a huge markup.
Oh, that dollar/ÂŁ parity on tech stuff. The only two laptops Iâve ever bought new were both on visits to the States.
Iâve never quite understood how tech outfits maintain such crazy price discrepancies; or why the US always seems to be on the right side of them.
Shipping might be some small part of it(Pacific Rim -> US West Coast is a nice straight shot); but in-US prices are almost always identical from coast to coast; so clearly papering over differing shipping costs isnât crippling; and (especially for business-class stuff) itâs not clear why the US would be seen as less willing and able to pay; nor is it clear how, in a commodified market like x86 PCs, they could avoid some local outfit importing more or less exactly the same Chinese ODM designs and selling them for less.
Itâs unpleasant; but legally fairly obvious, how software and media outfits can pull off region-locked pricing: what they sell tends to be interchangeable only in a broad sense, and if you want a specific program/album/etc. there is only one seller; but if you want âa laptopâ, Quanta, Foxconn, and their ilk will all sell you pretty much the same ones; and itâs not as though they wonât take euros or sterling, so how can Dell maintain that sort of price difference?
The problem there is warranty. Now, I know the EU mandates 2 years warranty and that adds some cost, but I have never had a laptop fail within 2 years, and Acer used to offer 3 years warranty including accident protection of ÂŁ100.
The reason I donât buy from US vendors - Apple and Dell - is that basically for everybody else if you know where to go you can usually get a price which has less extortionate markup built in. For Dell I believe business fleet prices are very much lower than end user price, but I suspect that goes for their dollar prices too.
I have a Chromebook - Samsung 550 - which is heavily used, but unless Google can get its vendors to be more reasonable about UK prices I wonât be replacing it when support expires in 2017.
You should see the prices in Brazil, home of the worldâs most expensive Macs (and the 5th most expensive Big Mac).
I know that Brazil is a world leader in crazy-expensive electronics; but isnât that peculiarity substantially the product of punishingly high import duties, intended to foster a domestic manufacturing sector, with a side of the countryâs relatively low marks on efficiency and governance? (Now, how they produce that many cows and still have the 5th-most expensive Big Mac, no clue).
I know that I see a lot of Portuguese on dealextreme and other Chinese sellers with limited interest in tedious âcustoms complianceâ. Such sellers take the same casual approach regardless of where you order from(I can only assume that the Chinese export regulators donât care; because the number of businesses sending âgiftsâ of astonishingly low alleged value to random westerners shouldnât take a rocket surgeon to notice).
Yes and yes. Buying trinkets from China is fairly popular as most small, light, cheap-thing-inside packages slip through taxes. Doesnât usually work with anything that doesnât fit in padded envelope or looks to be worth more than about US$50 in the x-rays. The bottom line is that you pay no matter what, be it directly in the post office, indirectly at the store, or flying to Miami for shopping if you can afford it (donât forget import taxes even then on anything over $500!).
The âfoster a domestic manufacturing sectorâ makes it sound like Brazil designs and manufactures its own awesome electronics, cars, bicycles or whatever with all that protection from foreign competition, but no. Guess the year when airbags became obligatory in cars, for instance: 2014.
The notion was amply proven to be a failure way back in the 80s when imports were banned. The result was the whole country being behind in technology and people having no choice but to use shoddy, overpriced manufactured goods. âImportedâ was the ultimate status symbol, and not much has changed, really.
Funny thing is that, say, Apple, Audi and a whole bunch of other multinationals get incentives to open local factories, arrive with great fanfare, use the cheaper labor to export things, and the cost of the now-not-imported-anymore products stay exactly the same. It seems a case of âif we can get away with it then why notâ.
Sorry for the rant. Itâs an old grievance.
Itâs fair enough, Brazil certainly seems to be getting nothing but a few plants that mostly slap cases on almost-complete subassemblies from China for tax purposes; and paying ghastly prices for it; which is hardly a good deal. I was just contrasting Brazilâs endogenous and historical causes to the ânobody seems to know quite why; but Europe pays moreâ, which does not appear to be explained by VAT, warranty terms, or any other regulatory baggage; or the Austrailian case, where even the government occasionally makes noise about how much of a screwjob software pricing is.
My vote is on plain old âgetting away with itâ being a universal constant. Who needs morals when you have cold hard cash instead?
Oh, itâs worse than âgoing onâ.
After kind of getting used to âeverything priced in dollars is twice as expensive here (before taxes!)â in the last few years, itâs suddenly âscratch that, four times as expensiveâ. That currency value graph above is frankly terrifying from our perspective.
Ok, enough derailing from me.
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