to be hacked off at yet another example of rip-off Britain

[clam]

Can someone please explain why Boots No 7 Protect & Perfect Body serum retails over here at £25, yet in the USA, you can get it in Target for 25 dollars? (approx £12.75). WHY, WHY, WHY?? It's manufactured over here, fgs. I am SO FED UP with this. Why do we put up with this and just pay up every time?

ah, but I still buy expensive loo-roll, desi, because my arse is indubitably worth it.

ok houses but that is not a boycott because the price is high - rather more like a lot of people can't borrow huge amounts. That is an adjustment in the market due to confidence not an adjustment due to price.

Desiderata - i am pleased that you boycott goods - but I am talking about the market in general.

we boycott tesco
on account of their virtually illegal and certainly immoral means of aquiring planning permission. and their advertising. and their general utter wrongness.
sadly we are in a v small minority

And tesco have made record profit I think??? I truely think we are the worst consumers in the western world.

I suppose that for an american who earns 1000 dollars a month, a serum for 25 dollars is just as expensive as a 25 pounds for someone earning 1000 pounds a month?
Gosh I'm not good at this .

But the government did an ivestigation into all this a few years ago didn't they? .

Something to do with higher labour and distribution costs so they said.....(not that I beieve that), and didn't Tesco try to sell some Levi jeansdirt cheap, and Levi took them to court and won, despite the fact they were cheaper in US (in fact, I think Tesco imported them from US to start with as cheaper than UK).

And as far cars...how many European investigatins into the price of these in the UK? Millions, and makes not a tiny bit of difference, they are still hideously expensive....

Rip off Britain, average wages, expensive goods..........

Yes Levi won - I think that Tesco had brought them in the far east, but Levi argued that you needed speicalist trained sales staff and it damaged their Trademark.

We should have all then refused to by Levi - but we in the uk did not - and the prices remain stupid.

I am usually Mrs "Own-brand" and would never have dreamt of paying 25 quid for a beauty product. But, when I saw they were half the price in the US, it set me back off on a rant that had lain dormant for a bit. (For the record, I didn't buy it there either.) And 'saving money' by buying abroad only works if you happen to be over there anyway, not if you make a special trip.
Re: the value of my car - a 6 year-old Mondeo? According to the Daily Fascist (and it serves me right for reading it today), the 2nd-hand value of cars like that is plummeting, due to tax/emissions charges, which will affect lots of family cars, even older, knackered, naff ones.

Ultimately it should cost less to purchase Uk products in the UK than it should to by them in the US.
The reason Boots charge £25 for it is because we will pay it.
The Americans obviously won't and therefore it is sold for 25 dollars.

It has nothing to do with the cost of American healthcare...

As I have just read on another thread (totally unrelated), the value of something is what someone will pay for it, which is why the housing prices are falling...

So it we stopped buying fuel for a certain amount of time who knows what would happen!

Yes I know what was meant by the USA healthcare reference, it was tongue in cheek!!

Unless there was a reduction in consumption, if we stopped buying fuel for a time there would be a huge surge as we all ran out of fuel and had to buy again.

But I do wonder what would happen if it could be arranged that we only put fuel in our cars on certain days of the week - and only when needed?

I know I have no statistical back up for this, or actually any logic, but I'm sure by changing our re-fueling habits we could affect the companies' profits (and tax) but I just can't work out how!!!!!!!!!

How do you fill up? £10 here and there? or empty then completely fill up?

Ummm, because no one in the US has heard of it whereas here it's got all hyped up thanks to that tv prog.

If you don't like the price, don't buy it. That would be the way to show you don't put up with stuff.

PBH - I fill up as I need to - and I really can't see how changing re-fueling would matter. My car goes 390 miles a tank - I have to drive to work and back - it lasts me x time, and then I refill.

OK, then what about holidays? I've stated on another thread my fury about under-occupancy charges etc.. in package holidays, and I've now said I will not go on one again. But we're now looking at supposedly cheaper (haha!) holidays in the UK and there's a whole new world of stupid prices to get cross about. If we're all drawing our horns in with expenditure at the moment, how can these places still hope to get away with it?

i bought some dior sunglasses from america. they are £290 here and i got them for £130 plus had to pay £31 tax. still cheaper than here though.
i agree, everything over here is taxed to the hilt.
i just bought a bag from amearice, £60 here £32 there, but i havent got it yet so dont know how much tax i will have to pay.

i does piss me off.

You are right - Rip off Britain is alive and well. I buy ALL my clothes on Ebay from the States and save an absolute fortune. I actually end up very embarasshed as people are always exclaiming over my dresses which cost around £500 in the shops here and can be had on ebay for a fraction of that.

"The reason Boots charge £25 for it is because we will pay it.
The Americans obviously won't and therefore it is sold for 25 dollars."

Not true.

Average weekly wage UK - £457 a week
Average weekly wage US - $743 a week

So in the UK a tube of this stuff costs about 5% of the average pre-tax weekly wage; in the US it costs 3.3%. Taxes in the US are generally lower than here, but remember that there is usually at least 6% sales tax added on top this isn't shown in the price, bringing the price up, and also that you have to pay for your own medical insurance, unlike the UK where we have the NHS.

It's so easy to shout about 'rip off Britain' when you are looking at a straight £ to $ exchange and you are earning £, but believe me, when you are living in North America, once you exclude the size of your house, the cost of living is similar, if not more expensive.

"once you exclude the size of your house?" But that's another thing.... my friend has a 6 bedroom, 6 bathroom, massive living-spaced, triple-garaged, swimming-pooled house, for roughly 2/3 of what we might get for a modest 4 bed detached here in the southeast. And a big top-of-the-range SUV that, new, cost about 2/3 of what similar models were going for 2nd-hand over here. It's hard not to compare.... especially when the Americans moan about fuel prices!
That said, I'd not swap with her.... but that doesn't preclude me from having a jolly good rant about it.

yeh but do they get 300 advantage points and free lipgloss for buying it eh eh?

I would be more annoyed about the fact thta it cost abut £1.20 to make, TBH. That's not rip off Britain, that's idiots falling for the hype and buying into the marketing bullshit.

Clam: are you switching to the Aldi 1.99 stuff? I have.

OK, maybe for cosmetics, and other luxury goods. And as they're non-essentials, then one can make the choice as to whether to buy. But it's across the board, it seems, with essentials too. Housing/fuel/food.....

iamdisappointed.... I'm still rather partial to my Nivea, actually. And I hear the MNers have been clearing the shelves of Waitrose Bottom butter or whatever it's called. Now that's hype, too, but cheaper hype. Or at least it was until word got round. Have they raised the price yet?