Rip-off Britain

This article strikes a chord with me, having seen how much less people on the continent or in the States pay for the same stuff that we buy. It rarely matter what the commodity is; cars, bikes, clothes, CDs, fishing gear, you name it, we invariably pay more for it.

A few years ago a friend of mine wanted to but a new bike, a Suzuki GSXR750. The official dealer in Northampton wanted ?9000 for one, a dealer in Brackley wanted ?6000 for an Italian-spec parallel import (exactly the same machine save for a km/h speedo and rh dip headlight) - and remember the parallel dealer had to buy the bike and import it before selling it for a rather thin margin. Needless to say, my friend saved himself 3 grand.
We hear the same old lame arguments trotted out about strong pounds and other bollocks like that, but it's up to us to use purchasing power, which is far easier now thanks to the EC and the internet. If enough people exercise their right to buy at a price they like, then the profit vultures in Britain will have to shape up or go out of business. Always ask for a deal, and be armed with a fall-back option of buying over the net or from someone else if a deal isn't offered. If we pay more than we need to, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

I know what you mean Simon,

I decided to buy a fish finder to check out any pools i was thinking fo leasing (well MADRAS anyway), after spending hours searching through the Brit sites i had a quick look at a few american ones.

I found a fish finder on one of the stateside sites for $60 which is about ?35/40 the same one over here was ?180!!!

So even after working out P&P i would still be saving over ?100.

I put more of the blame in the governments court than the suppliers though, as we all know, they have to have their cut how else would they be able to give themselves 125% pay rises each year & get the money back for their ridiculous expenses claims if they didn't??.

Hi to all in the UK. Down here at the other end of the world New Zealand ew have been very fortunate to have had a Franchize with Leeda for coarse fishing tackle but now they have sold out it's just one less and makes getting gear even harder as we dont buy enough juring a year. There are approximatley 1000 coarse fishing anglers down here, but our prices are less than the UK it's good for us. A reminder though to any angler comming down this way bring all your gear and more if you can, you will need it. Coarse fishing is great. Adrian.

Try Portugal, a slab of 12 standard size cans of diet coke costs 1.5 euros approx ?1.10


Dave