My mind boggles

[andrewducker]

Why is there such a massive discrepancy between online prices and high street prices for some items?

I wanted a 16GB USB flash drive.  As we wandered through Glasgow yesterday I popped into several places looking for one, and couldn't get one beneath £30 - and prices went up to £45.

Pop on to Amazon and I have a selection of possibilities from £17.

I could understand a premium of £5 for shopping in the high street.  But double the cost?  WTF?

Comments

[rosamicula.livejournal.com]

Sales staff, business rates, security, premises insurance, rent, public liability insurance, heating and lighting and air-conditioning. It's going to take a lot more than a five quid differential to cover those.

The poorest - those lacking the litearcy skills or web access or stuck with the kind of limited debit card that you can't use online will end up paying much more for goods, just s they have always paid more for credit.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Online businesses selling small items operate on tiny margins. One arm of the company I work for sells ink cartridges for printers online. The average profit margin is something like 11%. That's how competitive that sort of business is. There is no way you could operate a retail business on those sort of margins and hope to cover the overheads of running a shop.

[randomchris.livejournal.com]

Should have tried the QMU shop - I seem to recally that they start at under £10 for a 2GB one, and have 8GB ones for under £20.

[the-locster.livejournal.com]

And take away the folks that can shop online and the economies of scale for high street shops get even worse.

[aitkendrum.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Where were you. HMV had some for £15.00 last week and no mention of a sale. I got ours in John Lewis at a reasonable price at about 13?

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Tesco.(large instances). Beats many online sources for this sort of thing if you include postage.

[andrewducker]

Oh, my incompetence. That was for a 16GB stick.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

In that case, Amazon is still cheaper. Last time I checked, 8Gb cost around £11.