Well the name of my blog is 'THE DIFFICULTIES OF AN IRISHMAN' and as you may have gathered by now a difficulty that is frequent in my mind is - the beloved Dutch. My hobbie of pipe smoking and increasingly pipe collecting highlights one such difficulty in shiny dazzling hues. Dutch shop owner's charge outrageous prices for their pipes, while often telling me, "we don't sell many pipes these days". Well surprise surprise, when they're charging 3-4 times the price they can be had for on the internet, what do you expect! Would this encourage them to bring or bargain their prices down? Hell no. "That would mean we would loose a €150 profit?". Such mind boggling inability to grasp the concept of business is truly, well, boggle minded!
Never to be beaten by the system, be it all pervasive, provincial or overwhelming, I took my modest finances to the distance shores of Ebay. And quite a victorious campaign was had. Ebay is amazing, ignore it at your peril, real market forces, in real time at the click of a mouse. It assists in sustainability (most products are second hand or unwanted). It places, at your monitored finger tips, all that you could desire, free of salesmen, shop overheads, advertising hype and rude service from people behind a counter who obsessively try to rip you off and generally just insulting to your meager intelligence.
The Math
These pipes cost me $13, $29, $51 and $89, the latter would cost $450 in a shop here. So including shipping costs and import taxes - $70, I spent a total of: $252 = €172. In Amsterdam, they would've cost in total at least €620, so a saving of €448 or $657. Yes that's right, I saved $657 on the purchase of 4 pipes on Ebay, and the dutch call themselves great 'traders'. They don't own ABN-AMRO anymore, I wonder why? Great traders, my arse. The taste of victory is like a pipe, so very sweet. Call me bitter and twisted.
PIPES ON EBAY
2 comments:
Beat the Dutch at their own game, sell the pipe for €400, undercut them and make a profit. Make some cash, buy and sell. The Dutch were once a trading nation, but they know f*** all about sales now, and even less about customer service! ;-)
Anon, thanks for comment, I have found a few bargains in Amsterdam, but I've really had to search around, I'm amazed that in so many shops when I try to negotiate a better price they just blurt "NO". But the dutch I speak to themselves frequently tell me they always get a discount. So I suspect there is a large degree of anti-foreign mentality happening here. Another reason given is that it is a tourist city with tourist prices, but what is truly amazing is how unrealistic and out of keel the prices can be. I think dutch frugality is often small minded greed, and at least on the pipe thing between me and them it's all out war. And, I'll whip their ass standing on my head.
I'm seriously thinking of taking your advice, doing a little trading my self. Watch this space.
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