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So we're told that the prices for Australia are something to do with them setting them at a time before the exchange rate changed.

So what's the excuse with prices in Japan?

It's a sad joke. GW don't have prices relative to each other across the board. Even take what Worglock said, yes models are either worth what they are priced or not. So apparently they are worth a lot less in the UK than in other countries. So instead of doing something about the fething stupid prices they screw the postage into the ground.

I've hunted around and there seems to be no legal requirement to have fair postage. I thought there was the possibility for a tax issue with VAT and charges being different for the amount charged for 'postage' to the customer and the amount for the actual item being sold.

The only thing I can suggest is that somone from Japan buy something at these silly prices and then make a complaint to UK trading standards that they have paid heavily for a service that doesn't exist. Namely that they have paid £100 for something that has only cost £10.

Howard A Treesong wrote:So what's the excuse with prices in Japan?

Huge insurance premiums on account of giant monsters constantly destroying Tokyo.

UK Trading standards wouldnt care less, especially if you can be shown to have acted in bad faith.

Price sementation s nothing new. Levi jeans do not cost the same in the UK as they do elsewhere. MS Office is far cheaper in India than the US or UK. EVERYONE does it as, oddly enough, the local purchasing power varies more than a simple conversion tells you.

nosferatu1001 wrote:UK Trading standards wouldnt care less, especially if you can be shown to have acted in bad faith.

Price sementation s nothing new. Levi jeans do not cost the same in the UK as they do elsewhere. MS Office is far cheaper in India than the US or UK. EVERYONE does it as, oddly enough, the local purchasing power varies more than a simple conversion tells you.

I can only imagine the real answer is far simpler than "purchasing power".. Based on GW's latest decisions they do NOT want anyone buying products outside of their country. IE its a tariff that the company is using against their own products

They do not want you buying outside of your own country, so they can enforce the pricing segmentation within that country.

nosferatu1001 wrote:UK Trading standards wouldnt care less, especially if you can be shown to have acted in bad faith.

That could never be determined.

Price sementation s nothing new. Levi jeans do not cost the same in the UK as they do elsewhere. MS Office is far cheaper in India than the US or UK. EVERYONE does it as, oddly enough, the local purchasing power varies more than a simple conversion tells you.

Why do they do it though? Do they think that people in Japan and Australia are so much more affluent that they will pay these prices? At what point do these price increases become counter productive to profit?

The next financial statement or two might show the impacts of the price increase, the finecast and the clampdown on world trading all coming at once. I can't imagine they have done themselves any favours. Also this is not a great economic time in general so GW must be hoping for a good christmas.

Howard A Treesong wrote:
Why do they do it though? Do they think that people in Japan and Australia are so much more affluent that they will pay these prices? At what point do these price increases become counter productive to profit?

From my understanding, it has nothing to do with a perception of affluence.

It has to do with trying to lock down on currency shenanigans.

I would never buy from GW direct unless there is no other choice. Since I realized there are several retailers who can and do ship internationally, I have been ordering all my product from the US. I can save quite a bit of money considering the yen is 25% more valuable than USD. Shipping can be pretty reasonable to.

With regards to the prices in Japan killing the hobby here, it doesn't seem to be the case. If you are a Japanese hobbyist into GW games, you pay much more for GW products locally than anyone in the world including Aussies whose prices are *cough* more reasonable than ours.

Despite this, last week I accompanied one of my friend's to the GW in Jimbocho. I wS rather surprised to see 2 guys playing a game of WHFB, 7-9 guys painting, and 3 female hobbyists, of who 2 were painting in a segregated area. Seems like a pretty healthy shop to be honest. Now, perhaps GW will notice this and jack up the prices worldwide to match the glowing Japanese example of price insentitivity.

Kanluwen wrote:It has to do with trying to lock down on currency shenanigans.

Implying that GW is fighting against something that needs to be stopped.

The only one playing currency shenanigans is GW. I want to know if the £60 it will cost me to ship a pot of Skull White is going to Royal Mail.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:It has to do with trying to lock down on currency shenanigans.

Implying that GW is fighting against something that needs to be stopped.

The only one playing currency shenanigans is GW. I want to know if the £60 it will cost me to ship a pot of Skull White is going to Royal Mail.

Again: not saying it's right or wrong. Just saying it is.

Oh it's certainly wrong. Shipping costs don't spiral into the stratosphere like that unless the shipping costs are impacting everything shipped via that shipping company/organisation/government body.

If all Royal Mail shipping costs have jumped in this past week, then ok fine, I'll drop this. But I want to know - and these are really simple question really - is:

1. How much does Royal mail charge to ship something of the approximate size and weight of a Battleforce overseas, using standard airmail shipping methods (not next day or express, etc.).
2. How much of the £60 GW is requesting for shipping on a single pot of Skull White is going to Royal Mail.

Estimated a package with a pot of Citadel paint as 80 grammes and rounded up to a ton with packaging

Prices for delivery to USA
http://sg.royalmail.com/portal/rm/PriceFinderResults?pageId=pc_sltc_rm_results&keyname=rmPriceFinderResults&catId=23500532

to Japan
http://sg.royalmail.com/portal/rm/PriceFinderResults?pageId=pc_sltc_rm_results&keyname=rmPriceFinderResults&catId=23500532

About 6 weeks ago I ordered a bunch of parts from GWUK (shoulder pads, deathwatch sets, etc). They wanted to charge me 40 pounds to ship it to Australia. I get stuff from the UK via ebay pretty regularly, and the package would have cost well under 10 pounds.

In the end I got it sent to a friend in Germany who forwarded it onto me. It cost less than half of their 40pound quote to get it sent by (still inflated) post to Germany and then via normal DeutchPost charges to me.

H.B.M.C. wrote:
1. How much does Royal mail charge to ship something of the approximate size and weight of a Battleforce overseas, using standard airmail shipping methods (not next day or express, etc.).

It probably wouldn't cost more than £10-15 tops. A kilo is about £12 to Australia/USA/Japan from UK

I would like to know if they send it recorded delivery, that's an additional £6 when international. If they don't do that when charging £60 in total that really is disgraceful. You wouldn't even be getting the beset service when paying several times over the odds.

nosferatu1001 wrote:Price sementation s nothing new. Levi jeans do not cost the same in the UK as they do elsewhere. MS Office is far cheaper in India than the US or UK. EVERYONE does it as, oddly enough, the local purchasing power varies more than a simple conversion tells you.

For sure it's not new. It's very, very old. Which is kind of the point.

This sort of price segmentation is an out-dated concept. It's something that was accepted before the internet, but the growing push towards online shopping makes a bit of a mockery of geographical boundaries. Sooner or later, the companies that price themselves in this fashion are just going to have to accept that regional markets are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Make it harder for your customers to buy your product at a price that they consider fair (and twice what everyone else is paying is not going to fit into too many people's definition of 'fair'), and all you wind up doing is driving them away.

And trying to artificially enforce regional pricing by over-inflating your shipping, in a day and age where any perceived inflation of shipping costs will instantly get people off-side, just makes you look silly.

I bought a pile of books yesterday from Amazon.co.uk with free shipping to .au right now. Worked out at about $7.50 each. The local price for the books I bought is $18 each.

I'd like to buy things locally to support local retail job (ie middlemen) but the disparity is immense, and ultimately all this stuff is imported anyway, so I'm just cutting out local middlemen. Why I can purchase something at o/s retail + single-item airmail shipping for less than local retail can sell it to me for (even when the .AU dollar was poor) just boggles the mind.

I also bought 2x Sony 3DTV glasses for less (including shipping) than the price of one set locally.

Rationale: It might be a gimmick, but my recent TV cost a fraction more with 3D on it than the non-3D model, and I'd like my mum to see something on 3DTV before she passes away, which will be soon.

I love how GW "fixes" issues that make their customers mad by making their customers even more mad.

What a joke of a company. It's a real shame what they're doing to a great game.

Griever wrote:I love how GW "fixes" issues that make their customers mad by making their customers even more mad.

You've heard the expression 'when it rains it pours', right?

Well they do have a real shower in charge.

infinite_array wrote:

Worglock wrote:The product is either worth it for you to pay the prices they want, or it's not.

There isn't anything to defend.

That's... that's defending it.

What? Really?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pacific wrote:

Worglock wrote:The product is either worth it for you to pay the prices they want, or it's not.

There isn't anything to defend.

You, sir, are a legend. .

Thanks.

So. Are you still going to buy from GW or not?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Griever wrote:I love how GW "fixes" issues that make their customers mad by making their customers even more mad.

What a joke of a company. It's a real shame what they're doing to a great game.

I kinda like how the people that are getting mad still go out of their way to give money to the guys making them mad.

*sets watch*

AesSedai wrote:I would never buy from GW direct unless there is no other choice.

That seems to be exactly what they're going for.

AesSedai wrote:Despite this, last week I accompanied one of my friend's to the GW in Jimbocho. I wS rather surprised to see 2 guys playing a game of WHFB, 7-9 guys painting, and 3 female hobbyists, of who 2 were painting in a segregated area. Seems like a pretty healthy shop to be honest.

"Segregated"? Like...the female painters had to be kept separate from the males or am I reading that wrong?

AesSedai wrote:Despite this, last week I accompanied one of my friend's to the GW in Jimbocho. I wS rather surprised to see 2 guys playing a game of WHFB, 7-9 guys painting, and 3 female hobbyists, of who 2 were painting in a segregated area. Seems like a pretty healthy shop to be honest.

"Segregated"? Like...the female painters had to be kept separate from the males or am I reading that wrong?

Morgrath wrote:... but come on...how much stuff does GW ship to Oz in a month? Bulk shipping costs can't be high enough to almost double the cost of each individual product.

Double? According to GW, the cost of shipping a single pot of Skull white is 2600% the cost of the actual pot of Skull White.

But they are a business after all. They are just trying to make a profit. Fair enough I say.

Begging your pardon HBMC
For some reason I gave an example of Royal Mail charges for a pot of Citadel paint to the USA where according to my brain you reside

Am sure the links worked last night but now only show the home page
anyhoo the cheapest service is for a small package surface mail =£1.60
the most expensive International signed for delivery is a whopping £8.14

A small airmail package delivery would be £2.07

You get the idea.
Again am estimating a pot of paint to be 80 grams
rounded up to 100 gms with packaging.

Howard - nope, friend is in TS, and they dont touch anything like this - its not illegal or shady to charge whatever you like for shipping, as long as it is made clear the amount you are charging. If they feel you have tried to "set up" a company, i.e. acted in bad faith, theyre even less likely to care. Same in court cases - if you give the appearance of having set yourself up to be a "victim", knowingly, then you will get nowhere.

Companies segment by region in order to exploit differences in disposable income levels in differing regions, in the main.

So MS charges more for office in the UK than it does in India, because if you tried to charge the same price in India as the UK, you would end up with even more piracy. ANd vice versa you would still likely sell the same number of units, maybe a bit more, but would be losing out massively on the overall profit youre making.

Same here. GW "can" (want to) charge more in Aus because on average disposable income is higher, meaning the relative value for a given item is lower if you price them the same.

Insaniak - In fact this pricing segmentation is not going away - it is remaining. Levis went to court not so long ago to ensure this. Same for Hermes, and other brands. When it comes to physical goods you have a LOT more control than data. The EU even has specific laws regarding this, which is why GW are allowed to restrain the export by Maelstrom et al outside the EEA. (and, if it mattered, INTO the EEA as well)

HBMC - no, theyre saying the cost of them sending the item to you, outside of their standard local stocking through their shops, is X. Same way as you can ask a company to do something "non-standard", and they will charge you far, far more than it costs them + reasonable profit - as they will do it, but they dont really want to do it, theyd rather you use the standard ways and means.

Sorry but I still don't see that as a justification for the excessive prices charged both for shipping and goods in Australia and elsewhare

Totally unconviced

I SERIOUSLY doubt that the disposable income in australia reflects the price that australians pay. Im sorry I don't believe for a second that australians have double the disposable income as American gamers.

I would wager that american gamers have *more* which totally blows that excuse out of the water. However, I would believe that the price difference is due to a smaller market that has a similar income level to America and Euroland thus they need to gouge the people that do pay, and now restrict the ability of those who wont pay from buying overseas. Its a classic example of how mercantilism (tariffs) are used when you have a monopoly on a given market (As far was Warhammer goes, GW is the only producer). It's just a bizarre circumstance because they're being protectionist against themselves

How does international shipping get past all these countries customs? I can barley get an ebay product from overseas or to without someone lying saying it was a gift of a 2$ toy from grandma to get it out and in to some of these countries.

Doesn't customs snatch up all these international shipping deliveries and make people pay taxes or confiscate them all together? Who is 'liable' for a package gone missing in customs when you buy internationally?

I would wager that american gamers have *more* (disposable income).

I would broadcast that too loudly in case if gets back to GWHQ