On 27/05/2020 11:55, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
It's better now, though. Price differences can be explained by delivery costs,
import duties, and VAT/sales tax. And in the case of 1977, middlemen who
exploit the difficulty in importing stuff oneself.
The USA is some sort of gravity well when it comes to postage. It's cheap-ish
to send stuff to it, but unreasonably expensive to send stuff from there. So
for a product actually made in the USA, USPS, UPS, etc all conspire to ratchet
the price up.
Very often, yes. I see that most notably when I look at huge shipping
charges for stuff on eBay.co.uk or from the Global Store as seen on
Amazon.co.uk. Yet it's not always the case. Recently I needed a part
for a Weller soldering station originally bought from Farnell in the UK.
They're a Weller agent, only a few tens of miles from where I live, so
the logical place to look. Nevertheless, it was almost 40% cheaper to
buy the part from Digikey, including UPS shipping from Texas to my
address in the the UK, where it arrived in 36 hours.
--
Pete
Pete Turnbull
