Argos E book reader.Why the massive difference in price?€71 dearer in Ireland!?

Question

Argos are charging a whopping amount extra for exactly the same item in Ireland
http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/pa…

http://www.argos.ie/static/Product/partN…

How can they justify such a hike in prices?

Additional Details

I've taken the exchange rate in to account.The difference is €71.I cannot see how they justify that much extra.It's diabolical.

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

We get ripped of simply because were a smaller country.
Do what every other irish person does fill up your car go up north and get it there
-€30e petrol you save €41 p.s best place to buy up north is newry(as said by 98fm)
I always get my dad to bring me up north when something like this happens and his answer is always "yes sure" if its not sunday or too late on sunday he always says "yeah on sunday okay" or "Yeah okay next sunday".
I forget where i think its xtra vision but i know somewhere down here is selling that product for €199 which is pretty much the same.

Source(s):

Im Irish

Asker's Rating:

Asker's Comment:

I head north rather frequently these days as I'm in Donegal.Not far to go.

Answer 2

Taxes.

Source(s):

Money talks, bulls*** walks.

Answer 3

wow that is bad. The thing is one is in euros and one is in pounds,euros are always more expesnive but converted into pounds it might be the same amount. Failing that if argos is based in england or somewhere else they may charge more for P and P.

Answer 4

Argos is the worst of these companies , along with Ikea and many others who have catalogues exclusively printed for the R of I market.
I personally did a price comparison on a number of items between the Sterling and the Euro catalogue for Argos and found everything was 50% dearer in the Republic, than in Belfast. This was done after allowing for a currency of 85p to the Euro, and a VAT differential of 15% in UK and 21.5% in the Republic.
It's outrageous, but Argos will claim, it's what the market ( R of I ) can sustain.
They obviously don't realise that we are in a bigger recession than the UK.

Answer 5

We even have a name for it here in Ireland "rip off Ireland", taxes are higher but this does not account for the huge mark up so many shops charge. Just about everything you buy in Ireland is more expensive here, which is why so many Irish people go across the border and shop in Northern Ireland.

Answer 6

welcome to the rip-off-republic!
no it is not justifiable, it is so unfair and drives me mad but unfortunately there is nothing we can about it.

Answer 7

May be it is the tax and shipping cost...

I'm not sure if it helps, but will you consider the Amazon Kindle instead of Sony Reader? It is now available to Ireland. The Kindle is better because it has free wireless and text-to-speech function. There are more and cheaper ebooks you can find available for the Kindle, and books on the Kindle are quite a lot cheaper too. There are some good comparison between them here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?i…

http://www.speedreaderxreview.com/kindle…

And in case you don't know, Amazon has recently put a price slash on the Kindle 2, and it adds in international wireless access and native PDF support... So take the chance if you want it.

Hope it helps :)

Source(s):

http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?i… (Sony Reader)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0015T9… (Kindle 2 after price slash)