What rip-off? Add the 20% VAT that you'll pay in the UK to the US prices and there's little difference. People are always banging on about the difference between UK and US prices but there are good reasons, mainly the extra cost of doing business in Britain.
A couple of years ago the American electronics retailer Best Buy, the largest in the world, opened retail stores in Britain. Now, if British retailers are supposed to be making much more profit than their American counterparts, one would assume that Best Buy, with its enormous purchasing power and the supposed ability to work on lower margins, would have cleaned up. Er, no. They can't make money and have given up and have closed the stores and scooted back to the US with their tail between their legs.
Americans don't have 12.8% employers' N.I., four or five weeks paid holiday, maternity leave (also for men now!) people falling sick on holiday now able to claim the days that they were ill as working days and to be paid and take them later as extra holidays and all the rest of the costs that we bear. And as for land costs and rents in Britain!
The US is a massive market with two main languages as compared to a fragmented Europe with about thirty. Imagine the cost of doing business with thirty, mainly small countries, as opposed to one massive one.
So please, if you see a lower price in the US, don't scream rip-off and assume that someone in Britain is cleaning up. The chances are that they're making less than their US counterparts.
