I love a good affordable handbag and I thought I had found 2 I quite liked (not exactly high end fashion but it's what I like) in M&S in their new season.
They are both leather and on the M&S UK site they come in at £79 and £89 respectively.
So, being based in Dublin I started browsing their .ie domain for the same handbags and they have them for same for €110 and €125 respectively.
I don't know how the stores can justify that a bag in the UK costs £79 (equivalent to €89.29 today) and yet charge €110 for it, a difference of €20.71 and for the £89 bag (€100.59 equivalent today) charge €125 which would be a difference of €24.41. That's a hell of a difference in the price.
These are not in their sale, these are new stock items.
How can they continue to charge and subsequently defend these prices???
This has nothing to do with VAT rates or anything else as every where has VAT applied and I think the Irish VAT rate is actually higher than the UK one.
I've actually worked out that if I was to drive from Dublin to Newry, I'd still (even allowing for the cost of petrol) be quids in buying there (especially if I decided to buy wine/alcohol too) rather than in the store that is about 5k from my door.