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Ask HN: prices of electronics in Europe

5 points by mdaniel ↗ HN
I noticed in the "startup in Ireland" discusion, the comments mention that electronics were expensive there. They are expensive here in Paris, too. As a general rule, whatever the price is on Amazon.com, one can just just replace the "$" with "€".

I was wondering if that is caused by decreased demand, higher import duties, less active shipping lanes, or what?

I tried to see if this had already been discussed, but the keywords in my question made a meaningful query challenging.

8 comments

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fabiandesimone
In Spain is the same. Electronics are way to expensive.

I'm guessing is a tax thing, but if it's not imposed there's an opportunity for electronics arbitrage (which I see a lot when photographers friends go to the US, they take orders from other friends and charge a tiny % to bring the equipment back home)

mdaniel
Is there a demand for electronics/computers/etc within the general population of Spain?

I get the feeling that electronics and computers (outside of the work environment, anyway) are not important to Parisians. That would explain why things are expensive here: there isn't a high demand for those items.

However, in the startup-Ireland discussion, the very discussion was about startups, who I would think are the kind of people that would want fast computers and the associated peripherals. So there should be high demand in Dublin, but based on the websites I checked, my "flip the currency sign" metric still holds.

GBiT
Price is higher because you pay 18-25% VAT to government in EU .
nextparadigms
Most of it is the VAT and other taxes. I believe Americans pay something similar to VAT after they've already purchased the product, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
mdaniel
There are sales taxes, which vary wildly by jurisdiction: from 0% to I believe 10 or 12%. And you are correct, they are not ever presented in the listed price (which is a huge irritant). Due to a quirk of the Constitution, buying online usually falls under "interstate commerce" and is therefor excluded from sales tax.
mapster
Yes, the price is the same, more or less on consumer electronics. The fact that the average monthly wage in Italy is ~2000 euros, consider that an HD TV is more costly than to an American, who with the same job, takes 5000 USD a month. I believe it is due to the inflation that arose unchecked after the Euro took root in Italy.
laaph
While I am aware some discussions on HN make it sound like everyone in the US has a Silicon Valley type of salary, I assure you that is not the case, and the average US salary about $43000/per year, or closer to $3500/month (which, without looking it up, I think is about €2500).

Having said that, I still note that everything is more expensive in Europe (er, well, Netherlands and UK, the countries I'm most familiar with) than in the United States.

hendrix
entry level MBP in the USA is 1199 + 8.6% (in WA) = $1302 in Ireland (include vat) is $1606.