The Ohanaware Weblog
Europe: Why is everything so expensive?
Europe, home to millions. Idolized by millions more, but why is it so expensive? It’s not just that taxes are higher in Europe, companies charge Europeans more than the rest of world. Why, because they can!
Preface: I was born in, and grew up in England. Right from when I understood exchange rates and other countries, I became frustrated with the cost of items in England. For the last 4 years, I’ve been living outside of England and I’m used to paying the same prices as the rest of the world.
Amongst other things I’m currently back in the UK for a spell, and very quickly realized that the overpricing here hasn’t gone away, in fact I think it may have gotten worse. Now I’m not going to argue the exchange rate, that’s a dead horse and I don’t need to beat it any more.
Here’s the score, I wanted a nice shiny new camera for this trip, but because of one reason and another I never managed to purchase one before we left. Quite glad I didn’t because Olympus released their lust-worthy E-P1… I was filled with copious amounts of techno-lust and gobbled everything I could lay my eye’s upon. Then I read the price and baulked, £699 ($1,149) for the camera with a 14-42 lens… and £159 ($261) for the flash. I use a flash so I’ll have to add this on. £858 for the complete package, (in California this’ll cost $961/£581 CA state tax added), I said I wasn’t going to compare the exchange rate, however in the US this Olympus camera is the same price as a couple of other cameras $799 (no flash). Yet over here in jolly ole England, the competition is £480-£499. So now some real evidence of over-pricing. I contacted Olympus to see if this was a mistake, no comment… but wait, in the US, Olympus are doing the flash half price if purchased at the same time as the camera. I asked if they would be doing the same thing in Europe, no comment.
So why is it more expensive? Because people’ll pay it, pure and simple! I scoured a couple of photography forums to see the amount of complaints vs the amount of people who’ll hand over their hard earned cash. To my absolute shock, almost a 1000% more people are handing their cash over… Some stores I spoke to are out of stock. Very few people are complaining about the over-pricing. If you want to pay the same price as the rest of the world, don’t hand your cash over when they try to rip you off – simply really!
I for one will not tolerate such behavior from companies like this, I make my point by not buying this beautiful camera. The developers at Olympus have a built a camera that nearly made me their customer, but their marketing lost me.
UPDATE: Tried to make it clearer that the California price is including California State sales tax.
