Apple Bumps UK Prices as VAT Rises

[gnasher729]

Fascinating. Are they advertising this in such a way that consumers see the tax and that Amazon is covering it for them, or is it not visible at all?

Anything sold to consumers or targetted at consumers is advertised with price including VAT, and the VAT is not mentioned at all. Doing anything else would get you into legal trouble.

As I understand VAT, they've had a 2.5% increase, but most of the product prices only went up by 2% to 2.2%, so Apple gets less money for every product, and the consumer pays more, which is normal practice for every business with rising taxes. But remember, in the end, the customer always pays for all of it.

You just failed your maths test. An item priced at £100 excluding VAT changes from £117.50 to £120. That is an increase of exactly 2.128%. Not 2.5%.

I don't recall apple lowering their prices when the VAT was temporarily reduced to 15% last year

That's called "selective memory".

 

[sturla75]

Quote:
Originally Posted by crisss1205
And I thought 8.75% was high.


Try 9.75% in California.

...and here in Norway the VAT is 25%

 

[Merthyrboy]

Also remember though that when the VAT went down a few years ago so did the apple prices so I wasn't expecting them to stay the same.

 

[UrsaMajor]

You're talking about the fata$$ed Republicans now. Them are fightin' words.

I don't trust either party. Last I checked, democrats were helping bankers and gave the rich an extended tax break. So much for hope and change. Things only got worse for most people.

 

[SandynJosh]

As others have noted, other major international retailers are not passing on the VAT increase - Apple with such high margins surely should be able to.

Apple is passing along a message to the U.K. government that increasing VAT will cost more to the citizens. This will cause businessmen and grannies to riot in the streets along with the students. VAT will be lowered, Apple will return their prices to their psychological levels, and all will return to pastoral quiet in the lanes and byways of London and the countryside. The end.

 

[Bodypainter]

any other company would have lowered the prices and raised some other prices in order to make a "nice" price that "looks" good like 999 or 1.490 pounds. but hey, this is apple! they don't care about such things, as long as they can make money, money, money! squeeze the customer! who cares if a mac book now costs 1020 pounds or an apple tv 101. YES they would have lost money if they'd have kept it at 99 pounds, but they will now loose money anyway, because there are people who have a barrier when it comes to go over the 999 pounds barrier. they simply start to say: "do I REALLY need to spend so much money, when for example a similar cool sony vaio costs half the price?"

apple has their will, but from a marketing view of it, it is very stupid what they do here! and they know it, and will soon lower the prices.

 

[Bonch]

ROFL. Awww, poor brits. Screwed again.

 

[Yr Blues]

I don't trust either party. Last I checked, democrats were helping bankers and gave the rich an extended tax break. So much for hope and change. Things only got worse for most people.

Both parties are evil, IMHO.

 

[toromac]

nothing will change

First of all, you will still buy apple products as a UK customer if you were already going to buy them. If you can't afford it now, you couldn't afford it before. If you think otherwise, apple is not looking for customers like you who want to save 20 quid. This is not a bargain basement PC company.

Secondly, complain to your goverment. Don't let them walk all over you. 20% VAT seems malicious to me. I am not the typical socialist hating American, in fact, I see a lot of utility to socialism; however, there is a line... and the UK is beginning to cross it.

Take a nice little vacation over here to the US and buy your macs. You can consider it a discount on your vacation. Take care.

 

[iCantwait]

Typical Labour governments - always running the country into the ground.

 

[ArcaneDevice]

I dont understand why some UK members are complaining. i dont expect Apple to pick up the sales tax in the US.

I don't know why they are complaining about this price hike.

You buy a new Mac once in a blue moon but VAT affects almost every product in the UK that you buy on a daily basis. That's where the main complaints should really be aimed.

 

[ArcaneDevice]

Typical Labour governments - always running the country into the ground.

Wrong party.

 

[Crunch]

Austria is 20% as well. Germany 19%. Only Switzerland seems to have a "reasonable" VAT @ 7.x% (last I checked anyway).

Glad to be in America.

 

[jedi58]

Austria is 20% as well. Germany 19%. Only Switzerland seems to have a "reasonable" VAT @ 7.x% (last I checked anyway).

Glad to be in America.

Austria 20%
Germany 19%
Netherlands 19%
Belgium 21%
Greece 23%
Poland 22%
Bulgaria 20%
Hungary 25%
Portugal 20%
Cyprus 15%
Ireland 21%
Romania 19%
Czech Republic 20%
Italy 20%
Slovakia 19%
Denmark 25%
Latvia 21%
Slovenia 20%
Estonia 20%
Lithuania 21%
Spain 16%
Finland 22%
Luxembourg 15%
Sweden 25%
France 19.6%
Malta 18%
UK 20%

 

[Rajani Isa]

Yes

The US situation is both good and bad. Good, because it reminds the customer how much tax they're paying - and that keeps politicians in check. Bad, because it's annoying to have to keep working out how much you'll have to pay.

They don't need to lower the price, they just need to keep it the same - as other, very successful businesses are doing.

... They are keeping them the same price, that's why the your cost is increasing with your tax increase.

For your COST to remain the same, Apple would have to lower their prices.

Every where except the US pretty much. I found it very confusing when I was in th US. it's good to know what you will pay before you get to the till. I have yet to go to a country other than the US that doesn't do this

I think that it's in part due to sales and coupons (which can be % or simple $ discount) - combined with the lack of a national tax and the fact that even within a state or county their can be different tax rates - and some items don't have a tax rate, but just a tax (here in Oregon, we have [as of the new year] a 30 cent a gallon tax - it's a flat tax, not a percent)

I don't trust either party. Last I checked, democrats were helping bankers and gave the rich an extended tax break. So much for hope and change. Things only got worse for most people.

Democrats tried to get the tax cut for the top tier(s) to expire - most did anyway. They also tried to extend other tax credits that were for lower-income people, but both were held victim to the fact that the basic tax cuts for lower/lower-middle class incomes was held hostage by others (a majority Republicans)

 

[declandio]

Austria is 20% as well. Germany 19%. Only Switzerland seems to have a "reasonable" VAT @ 7.x% (last I checked anyway).

Glad to be in America.

If you come to the UK for a holiday and break your leg or have a heart attack they'll fix you up without even asking your name, let alone if you can pay.

Glad to be in Europe.

 

[Phil A.]

20% VAT is pretty much the norm for the European Union countries (some are higher, some are a bit lower) - see the attached table (from the BBC website)

Personally, I don't have a problem with the increase - the UK (along with the rest of the western world) is in a complete financial mess and it's time we started to face that fact and try and get back on a firm financial footing by reducing the ridiculously high budget deficit. If that means people have to pay 2% more for material goods then so be it

 

[Full of Win]

If you come to the UK for a holiday and break your leg or have a heart attack they'll fix you up without even asking your name, let alone if you can pay.

Glad to be in Europe.

Really? They don't even ask you your name. That is a little rude if you ask me.

 

[declandio]

Really? They don't even ask you your name. That is a little rude if you ask me.

They'll ask for it at some point but they'll treat you even if you don't give it!

 

[bigjobby]

Typical Labour governments - always running the country into the ground.

Ermmm... don't comment about British politics when you've no idea what's going on.

FYI: The Labour government are not in power and did not implement the VAT rise amongst other things.

 

[CoreForce]

Austria is 20% as well. Germany 19%. Only Switzerland seems to have a "reasonable" VAT @ 7.x% (last I checked anyway).

Glad to be in America.

The Swiss store went offline last night too.
Maybe because Apple had to adopt to the increase of the VAT here as well.
It was going up from 7.6% last year to unbelievable 8% now.

Shopped recently in the Granite state with 0% taxes and life still goes on there. Pure magic.
With the exception to the AT&T store who ripped me off, that was the best shopping and customer service experience for a long time. Left loads of money there

 

[marcnotrust]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8B117 Safari/6531.22.7)

Some observers had hoped that Apple might choose to simply absorb the tax increases by reducing their prices slightly in order to maintain the psychological price points used for many of their products, but the company obviously decided that it needed to pass along the tax increase to consumers in order to maintain its margins.

lol.

Thanks a lot LibCons

I really can't wait to emigrate.

Snap!

 

[TheBigApple2006]

FYI: The Labour government are not in power and did not implement the VAT rise amongst other things.

True, if anything the previous Labour government had brought it down to 15% temporarily at the end of 2009.

A thing that doesn't appear to have been noticed in this thread so far (apologies if it has been done) is that other major retailers are offering a "VAT Freeze" campaign until the end of January (Best Buy UK, Superfi, etc.) So effectively they are withholding raising the end-user prices for a few more weeks. This means that even legit Apple resellers, other than the shady Ebay deals, are offering Mac hardware at lower prices than Apple itself for the time being. It is a bit baffling to see Apple UK being undercut by its own official competitors for the time being!

That being said, I am glad I listened to advice being offered on this forum and took the plunge for a 11'' MBA last night!

 

[Fraaaa]

Last I checked, UK prices (without VAT) are higher than US prices (without Tax) but a noticeable margin. Now I know Apple is not charity nor are they known for affordable products. But couldn't they just have absorbed the cost?

This may come back and bite them in the arse.

Why?

There is no company that decrease their margin of profit to accomodate the VAT increase, why Apple should do that?

On the other hand, generally a business has to pay other people/company/services with VAT bump. So you would reduce margin of profit and you'll have also more expenses to pay, why a company would do that?

 

[Ironduke]

ROFL. Awww, poor brits. Screwed again.

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