John Lewis Vat "Reduction"

scottishminnie

This has left me so speechless I have to share it - I also suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg

I've been watching the price of a Kitchenaid foor mixer for 4/5 months now - John Lewis £335 consistently (apart from a one day when it was £305 and I missed it!).

Earlier this week they went up to £341 so I called John Lewis customer service to ask if they would be reduced by 2.5% next week due to the vat reduction.

Their response is that the £335 was a special deal (no mention of this on the site ever), the "real" price was £349 so the vat reduction took it to the new price of £341.

How many other retailers are going to hike the price of the goods up prior to Monday and then claim they have reduced them. What a rip off
:mad:

Ivory_Tinkler

I suspect a lot of companies will do this but I wonder what they will do next December when VAT goes back up to 17.5% - will they put their prices up again? Maybe we should all start searching on and offline for companies who really have passed on the savings - I bet we'll find that big companies haven't and smaller little independent companies have. If this is the case then I shall be actively looking to spend my dosh with companies who have passed on the saving, purely out of principle.

Bamber19

I wasn't really expecting that, keeping prices the same and therefore making an extra 2.12% (It's a 2.5% change in VAT not in total price so no-one should ever have expected a 2.5% price reduction) on every sale was how I expected most to go but putting prices up?

Ivory, the thing about the smaller independant companies is that most of them already have a cushy deal whereby they charge us VAT at 17.5% but pay much less to the government by way of a flat rate. I think charging 17.5% but paying 10% is the standard.

Ivory_Tinkler

I think that the flat rate scheme only applies where turnover is less than £150,000 which isn't a great deal if you have a little shop somewhere. I think (but I may be wrong) if a company opts for the flat rate scheme then they don't claim back any vat paid to their suppliers whereas the larger firms charge customers 17.5% but also claim back any vat that they have paid to suppliers. I suppose it's all swings and roundabouts in the end.

It will be interesting to see what happens in stores on Monday anyway.

vyle

To be fair, every item has been reduced - I should know, I spent all of wednesday ondwards putting new price tickets out on my department.

If the item was on an undersale - i.e. a national competitor it undercutting JL - then the price would be reduced on the website, but there wouldn't be any notice stating so.

No prices have been put up to counter the VAT change, but undersales won't be reduced, only their usual price.

brasso50

You beat me to it vyle. I am a regular reader of various forums on this site but this is the first time I have ever posted. I am part of an admin team for one of the John Lewis depatment stores and have also along with 10 of my coleagues spent wed/thurs/friday changing the prices to reflect the change in VAT and they are all going down. I agree vyle with all you have already said. I have worked for John Lewis for more than 30 years and it is a retailer who can be trusted.

scottishminnie

I don't understand why the original price on the website wouldn't have indicated it was less than usual/should have been - surely JL would wish to make customers aware of this?

brasso50

I'll try to answer that one for you. Our price promis is never knowinly undersold. So that means if we know another retailer is selling something cheaper than we are and the item is exactly the same we will drop our assortment price. So some popular and widly available items can go up and down alot. This particularly happens in small electrical, audio and tv and beauty. But because it is our usual practice and happens all year round all the time we dont highlight it. If you look on John Lewis . com we are highlighting that we are respondig to a competitors event and there are some hefty temporary reductions in Mens, and beauty in particular and you benefit from the lower VAT rate now early before Monday. Hope Im not breaking any rules by the way I'm posting.Not pushing JL just highlighting how trustworthy and honest we are.

scottishminnie

thanks Brasso - the fact that they are currently pushing the "responding to a competitors event" is what surprised me even more about your response. That's clearer now.

Blacksheep1979

brasso50 wrote: »

I'll try to answer that one for you. Our price promis is never knowinly undersold. So that means if we know another retailer is selling something cheaper than we are and the item is exactly the same we will drop our assortment price.

You do realise how much bollox that is - the number of times I've asked for a price match only for you to pull out some excuse such as 'we sent someone but couldn't see the price ticket, or item wasn't on display' etc - you know on electrical goods that 99.9% of the time you are charging 10-30% more than your competitors.

vyle

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

You do realise how much bollox that is - the number of times I've asked for a price match only for you to pull out some excuse such as 'we sent someone but couldn't see the price ticket, or item wasn't on display' etc - you know on electrical goods that 99.9% of the time you are charging 10-30% more than your competitors.

I can't speak for other stores, but in the one I work, a huge amount of the audio/tv are on undersale. Quite often the customer, due to how similar tvs look and their similar item names, will mistake a cheaper tv for a more expensive one and will try to get the price reduced.

Take the Panasonic 37LZD85 for instance, that's currently 899. A competitor has the Panasonic 37LXD85 for 599. I've had a lot of people try to get the former reduced to 599, but although they look exactly the same and both end with 85, they're not, specification wise.

Also, JL matches published prices, not one offs, so if a salesman has said to you "oh, it should be 499, but I'll let you have it for 450," that's a one off sale available to one person at a specific time, not a promotion or price that's widely available.

Furthermore, a few competitors (im naming no names) like to publicise very low prices for goods they don't actually have, so we can't match those because there's nothing to match.

My advice to anybody trying to get an item reduced through an undersale is to make sure that the price you've seen is visible in the competitor's shop, that they have them in stock, and that the price is for the exact model. Every letter and number in a model name is important. for instance, simply putting "sony BRAVIA" isn't enough because every TV sony puts out is a Bravia.