Euro vs GBP pricing discrepancy

sirweste

Cheers for the people replying (well the ones that don't want me to pay more than I should!)


I have emails from the company that I could copy in, but the summary of it was that they wanted to be able to advertise a stable UK price. The difference in pricing is nothing to do with shipping as Ireland pay the same price as France, Germany, etc etc.


The bike I'm looking at is £3500 (converted from EUR) or £4300 UK pricing. + a few quid for shipping and a bike box they force you to buy from them.


I didn't think it would be lawful, didn't make sense that you could discriminate against other EU countries.


Cheers again for the replies

zaax

Try these people to see if you can get the correct price

http://www.ukecc.net/

SuperHan

Interesting point on not selling to other EU country residents. A number of businesses are stopping selling to other EU countries for digital services given the new VAT implications and the VAT MOSS making it very expensive to do.

I can only imagine these rules are being implemented very loosely, and I suppose it is only a directive so open to interpretation by individual states.

unholyangel

I was trying to get a look at the actual directive to see what it says etc as sometimes advice pages can give a misleading view.

On the page OP has linked, it seems to refer to service providers.

The corresponding directive linked in the page is for services. The corresponding UK legislation is for services and also the accompanying guidance from the government states it is only for service providers (although there are exceptions like financial services as they are already subject to other directives).

So it doesn't seem like OP's purchase of goods would fall under the remit of that directive.

peachyprice

sirweste wrote: »

The difference in pricing is nothing to do with shipping as Ireland pay the same price as France, Germany, etc etc.

The actual shipping (as in postage) doesn't necessarily cost more for them to send the bike to the UK but shipping (as in the admin sense) does. There are more costs involved for them if they choose to sell here beyond selling to any other country using €. The costs of setting up a UK VAT account, a £ bank account or not and take a hit on every transaction, potentially losing money on conversion of £ to € etc are all rolled in to the increased price you see. Selling to the UK from a € zone doesn't come cheap and for a business it's not as simple as just taking the money and sending the parcel.

They're not necessarily trying to charge you more just because they think they can get away with it.

photome

peachyprice wrote: »

The actual shipping (as in postage) doesn't necessarily cost more for them to send the bike to the UK but shipping (as in the admin sense) does. There are more costs involved for them if they choose to sell here beyond selling to any other country using €. The costs of setting up a UK VAT account, a £ bank account or not and take a hit on every transaction, potentially losing money on conversion of £ to € etc are all rolled in to the increased price you see. Selling to the UK from a € zone doesn't come cheap and for a business it's not as simple as just taking the money and sending the parcel.

They're not trying to charge you more just because they think they can get away with it.

Dont disagree for the most part,

the bit in bold......they might be

OP is the bike available in the UK? if so for how much

DandelionPatrol

peachyprice wrote: »

The actual shipping (as in postage) doesn't necessarily cost more for them to send the bike to the UK but shipping (as in the admin sense) does. There are more costs involved for them if they choose to sell here beyond selling to any other country using €. The costs of setting up a UK VAT account, a £ bank account or not and take a hit on every transaction, potentially losing money on conversion of £ to € etc are all rolled in to the increased price you see. Selling to the UK from a € zone doesn't come cheap and for a business it's not as simple as just taking the money and sending the parcel.

They're not trying to charge you more just because they think they can get away with it.

Not true. It is as simple as taking the money and sending the parcel. There is no need whatsoever for the business to bear any cost of £ to € conversion or set up anything in the UK if they dispatch from the country of origin and charge in €. They can charge the appropriate amount for carriage to the UK too. VAT is charged in the country of origin at the local rate under the single market.

SkyeKnight

unholyangel wrote: »

I was trying to get a look at the actual directive to see what it says etc as sometimes advice pages can give a misleading view.

On the page OP has linked, it seems to refer to service providers.

The corresponding directive linked in the page is for services. The corresponding UK legislation is for services and also the accompanying guidance from the government states it is only for service providers (although there are exceptions like financial services as they are already subject to other directives).

So it doesn't seem like OP's purchase of goods would fall under the remit of that directive.

Purchase of products online is included in "services" - though that would not be the general English usage of the word services of course.

http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/shopping/shopping-abroad/buying-services/index_en.htm

peachyprice

DandelionPatrol wrote: »

Not true. It is as simple as taking the money and sending the parcel. There is no need whatsoever for the business to bear any cost of £ to € conversion or set up anything in the UK if they dispatch from the country of origin and charge in €. They can charge the appropriate amount for carriage to the UK too. VAT is charged in the country of origin at the local rate under the single market.

Yes, it is true.

Do you know how much business banking charges are if £ hit a € account and vice versa? It isn't free, far from it.

They can choose to pay VAT either in the originating country or in the UK, if they have been paid in £ it makes sense to pay VAT in £ to HMRC rather than lose money in the conversion to €.

Charging VAT in the originating country under the single market only makes sense when dealing with customers in other countries using €.

peachyprice

photome wrote: »

Dont disagree for the most part,

the bit in bold......they might be

There, I edited that bit