Talk:Rip-off Britain

This statement appears to me to be incorrect.

"However, "customer not present" transactions can generally not be made for legally controlled products such as alcohol, tobacco, solvents, fuels, or medication."

So how am I able to buy all of those over the internet and have them delivered to me ? I can buy alcohol, tobacco and solvents from any supermarket and have them delivered to me. I can have fuel delivered, and I can have medications I bought on the internet legally. So it doesn't seem like this statement is correct.

It's the same with Amazon. I can buy alcohol from them, but someone over 18 has to sign for it when it gets delivered. This is certainly a "customer not present" transaction as I didn't buy it face to face in a store.

Suggestions for improvement

I think this article could easily be made much more encyclopedic.

The examples given read more isolated complaints than something normally found in WP - I suggest we remove those, and concentrate the article more on the phenomenon and less on the individual gripes. How do others feel about this? -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 21:28, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

This article is a joke. You can't just exchange a currency and say "this item is $400 in America but 300 pounds in UK so it's like we're paying $600 for it!" That's not how it works. It's how much the item costs within your OWN economy. You're not being ripped off by buying that John Grisham book that equates to $14 USD. Only if some dumb American decided to order the book from Amazon.co.uk is he paying that much. Likewise, if you can get an American seller to send you that book from America then you'd get a great deal but you're not being ripped off by purchasing it with your own currency within your own economy.

I think that saying In the UK we pay 79p for a song on iTunes and in the US they pay 99c, we pay $1.35, what a rip-off " is a load of old rubbish.

Get over it, Australia pays $1000 for a Playstation 3, New Zealand pays $1300. Suck it in, Britain's got a good deal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.238.230.7 (talk) 07:44, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

A lot of this article is non-NPOV and reads like a rant. Quotes of differences in price for an individual book do not substantiate the claim that one Amazon site is always more expensive than another (are there any external surveys that have been done which show that the UK site is more expensive?) and it's impossible to compare things like cellphones where US retailers typically lock in their customers to much longer contracts with higher monthly subscription fees than do companies in the UK.

Wikipedia is not a blog for consumer grievances and this material is inappropriate for an encyclopedia article. Most of the article probably just ought to be deleted, but I'll leave it to an editor with more experience than me to do so. Dr.croft (talk) 19:09, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I've tried to scrub out the worst of the POV. It's fair to state a fact, if it's 79p versus 99c and an exchange rate is given, what's wrong with that? (To then say "we pay" is WP:Worldwide and of course "what a rip-off" is blatantly POV). But as long as the examples are representative examples (and I'd assumed EVERY download was that price) I don't think that the price conversion of itself implies POV.

Similarly there's no POV, as such, in calling it "Rip-off Britain". That is the title of the article, it then discusses it, refers to its use in trusted sources, and so on. While I still think there is more scrubbing out of POV to do, I am trying to take a little care not to throw the baby out with the bathwater-- we need to get to a position of describing the perception of Britain being a rip-off, but, eh, little by little. I hope now it's in a position where others can start editing to contribute; in my experience an article lulls then as soon as there is some activity everyone is all over it (hopefully for the better). SimonTrew (talk) 14:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

NPOV

I have flagged this up as, like the previous writer said, it reads like a personal view and needs to be made more enclyclopaedic. Oxfordmale (talk) 12:51, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I've added a few citations, tried to get rid of a lot of the rant, and generally reorganised. It is still a bit POV I think, but it is substantially cited now-- a few still left to go (e.g. PS2, discount books), but I certainly think this is worth having as it is, as seen by the various references, widely quoted as a term in trusted sources. SimonTrew (talk) 14:45, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Software

Software should be mentioned as the USD price is numerically the same as the Sterling price for many programs, which is absurd, even taking VAT into account.203.122.228.82 (talk) 11:34, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

It is now-- examples Adobe and Microsoft. We should't multiply examples needlessly (Occam's Razor), but maybe one more would be good. SimonTrew (talk) 14:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Revert

Someone had turned this article into a stub and taken away a lot of previous work on it. I think this was a bad idea and have reverted to the previous version. I'm not saying it's perfect now, for sure there is work to be done on it, but there is no point in throwing the baby out with the bathwater. --Richardrj ^{talk email} 13:09, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Pretty much rewritten now, references added, a lot of blatant POV removed, organised a bit better (I hope). No doubt could still do with improvements. SimonTrew (talk) 18:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

US Sales Taxes

I need to find a citation for 5% as average US sales tax. I found some tables that list the taxes for each state, but that doesn't account for local taxes. Also I guess an average should be weighted to the populations of each state, or to their purchasing power or something. i.e. the general figure should be something to do with "how much of an average person's spending actually goes on sales taxes"? SimonTrew (talk) 18:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Terrible example

The example of an iTunes download costing "17% more than the 99¢ per download in the US" seems rather poor given that the rate of VAT would have been 17.5% at the time. Is "Rip-Off Britain" even a subject sufficiently notable to warrant its own article, though? As a relatively lazy and loosely-used catchphrase, rather than anything specific and tangible, perhaps it's more an illustration of ennui and an apparent British love of considering that they are always at a disadvantage compared to others. But that kind of philosophical musing isn't suited to an article either. Bonusballs (talk) 18:16, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia itself is an example

Wikipedia in its recent campaign was asking for donations suggesting US users pay $5 and UK users pay £5. What excuse does Wikipedia have for this? QuentinUK (talk)

I don't think it even matters. Donations pages typically ask for nice round numbers, it doesn't make the "cost" different from one locale to another. And it is a terrible example to use in the article. In fact, as soon as I save this comment, I am going to remove it. Huw Powell (talk) 01:21, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

The section is not about donations. It is about switching £ for $ on the price because it is easy to do. It is nothing to do with round numbers. Most prices end in .95 or .99 and are not round numbers. When a company coverts $25.99 to £25.99 it has nothing to do with round numbers. Donations is just an example. This phenomenon applies to all products. It also shows that the conversion is nothing to do with costs. You could equally do Adobe Photoshop prices (and much other software). The price is the same number is $ and £. There is no excuse for this for internet downloads.
You say you don't like the example but that is not an excuse for removing the whole section.QuentinUK (talk) 12:36, 9 March 2016 (UTC)