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Thread: Do we have to standby and watch our bus service disappear?

  1. #21
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
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    I canna get enough of the coo
    FYI its circa a 4 mile round trip just to find a bus stop, a fair bit longer to get a shop
    W.A.T.P.

  2. #22
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
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    Quote Originally Posted by mi16 View Post
    I don’t mind paying a little more to shop locally and get the product in my hand but I do baulk at paying 50% or more over other retailers.
    I was in the market for a plastic Xmas tree and tried the local retailers, in one shop they were selling a nice one for a little over £200 I took the product number and googled it and found it could be bought online including delivery for £99.
    I never bought that particular one but that ended my local search for one.
    So heres how it goes.....

    Local retailer buys in some top quality Christmas trees. They're not cheap, but the quality is brilliant. To make a modest profit, after paying for rent, rates, electricity, staff, National Living Wage, Pension Contributions, statutory paternity pay et al, she prices them at a little over £200. Local shoppers come in and admire the tree in the shop, where they can check it out in the flesh (plastic?). Then they go home and Google it. For £99, there is the same tree, for sale from a warehouse dahn sarf, run by Trotters Independant Trading. As they have less overheads, and employ Romanians in the warehouse on the QT, they can just about scrape a profit.

    Next year, local retailer buys in some cheaper trees from China. Not near as good, but she can sell them for £75 and still make some profit. Though she had to let young Jenny go as things were gettling a bit tight. Meanwhile, dahn sarf, TIT are selling the same Chinese trees, with a CE mark (Chinese export) for £50.

    The following year, on the brink of bankruptcy, the local retailer buys in a load of dodgy trees from the dark web. They have no labels, let alone CE markings. She manages to sell a few at £25 each. But within a week, there has been a spate of house fires all over Caithness as the cheap power supplies explode in the middle of the night and burn 'e hoose doon.

    The next year, local shoppers are dismayed to find the shop closed. The retailer was sued, but had no money left anyway. Meanwhile, TIT moved onto the next big thing. Shoppers, both high street and online found the only way they could buy a Christmas tree was to send for it to China themselves. Having sent their money, they then wondered why no tree arrived, and why the local Trading Standards said they could do nothing for them.

    So they all lamented how good things were in 'e good old days, when you could buy things on 'e High Street.

  3. #23
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    If you are needing a fake tree each year I’d question the quality of the product.

    Do you think a markup in excess of 100% is perfectly acceptable then, would you be quite happy to pay your local car dealer £40,000 for a £20,000 car to keep the cash local you understand?

    Hopefully the local trader is banged up for flogging non CE marked goods
    Last edited by mi16; 19-Jun-18 at 23:15.

  4. #24
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    100% mark up for a retailer is not out of the way. A typical retail mark up used to be, and probably still is double it and add the VAT.

    Take for example, a bottle of whisky. Lets say Grouse. £14.00 in Tesco, probably averaging £2.50 a nip in a pub. There are 28 nips in a bottle, so the publican will sell it for £70 - A lot more than the differential in prices in your Christmas Trees

    Margins will vary according to sectors. Some fashion mark ups will be in the order of 450%. All that shop floor space and costs of folk coming in to try on the merchandise have to be covered somehow. Cars I expect have lesser margins. But there still needs to be something in it for the retailer.

  5. #25
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    Not really comparing apples with apples with whisky comparison, Tesco sells you the bottle.
    The pub sells you the dram, plus the loan of the glass, telly, light, heat, venue, servant etc etc.

    Every business must make profit to survive of that I agree but it’s also the customers demand to obtain value for money.
    If the two cannot find a balance then something has to give

  6. #26
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    With your above analogy, the local retailer, as well as the tree, sells you the space to examine it in and see really how big, or small it is, a space which is heated (unless you buy your tree in June), lit and accepts your choice of payment. If in the event your tree is faulty, they are there to swap it for you.

    Whilst indeed consumers seek out value for money, many cannot see past that, and expect to pay ridiculously low prices, yet expect ridiculously high service levels. The example above of a consumer who bought a bike online, paying online prices, then expected high street service is a classic one. The end result there would have been disappointment. Whoop de doo, they saved 15% by buying online. But suddenly that pales into insignificance when they now have to try and deal with an online retailer 500 miles away who doesn't want to know.

    Aside from all that, theres a reasonable chance that online retailers operate from domestic premises (depends of course on the size of the operation, and even the size of the merchandise), avoiding paying business rates. Those that do pay business rates, do so somewhere other than Caithness. So your hard earned coin is going to support local services in England, rather than Caithness.

    So sure, you will get it cheaper elsewhere. But little use then bleating that Caithness is like a ghost town, no shops left and no jobs left (unless of course you are a delivery driver or a dole office clerk).

  7. #27
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    You won't hear me greeting about firms closing, that's life

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