Is this profiteering? People need to know!

[Papworth Pip]

Having not bought amy track for over a year, the current shortage has really caught me out so I've been searching the internet for both Peco SL track and points accepting that I will have to pay more than I used to with Track-Shack - such a pity they have gone last weeked. However I was not in the least bit prepared to find a single length of track (SL 100) at £12.99 on sale at AMAZON. That is a full three times the RRP.!!  It is a third party seller in fact, based near Halifax who sells on eBay a lot of the time.It is frustrating enough to have to wait for my new Hornby locos currently on order!

Man shed almost finished-just 600 screws to put in to secure pine cladding that is hiding the insulation.

[Mac-_-]

It's only profiteering if you give them the money  😉. Good liuck with the man shed.

[96RAF]

So what is the comparative price for the equivalent Hornby or Bachmann Europe track length.

It just seems a bit odd to be moaning about the price of Peco track in isolation on a Hornby forum.

[AndyMac1707817969]

I think you are misunderstanding the entire concept of ownership. Items that belong to someone else are theirs to do what they like with (within the law). It’s up to them to decide what they want for them not you. They are under no legal obligation to sell them to anyone and can ask what they want it’s up to the other party in the transaction to agree. You are in no position to demand anything all you can do is decide if you want to pay that.

 

Yes there is a lot of self-entitlement around nowadays where people think they are entitled to other people’s property for as little as they want to pay for this. They often wrongly call this a ‘fair price’ when of course the only people that benefit is them. As I often say self-entitlement entitles you to nothing.

 

Of course all this only applies when they want to buy something, when the boot is on the other foot and they are selling something like their house its simply get as much as you can for it, profiteering is never mentioned then.

[ColinB]

Firstly, I am really sad to see Track Shack gone, I only realised they were there in the last year, their service was exceptional. As for profiteering, whenever you look at EBay or Amazon it is always a good idea to do a Google search at the same time. I recently wanted a particular Hornby loco, no longer made, on EBay they were going for silly prices, I eventually found one at a model railway dealer for less. This has happened with Skaledale mdels as well. People sometimes get carried away with EBay. As for the SL100, isn't that the 1 metre long length of flexible track, if so, I can understand why it is expensive. For that price I imagine it had free postage and packing, Royal Mail won't accept it as it is too long for their equipment so you are talking private courier, hence the price. If you are going to buy flexible track, it is either your local model shop or the bulk order from Hattons or Rails. It is one of the few items I regularly buy from my local model shop, although he complains that he makes very little profit on it.

[VESPA]

If you wnat to hear about profiteering, 100 surgical masks for my dept a few years back was around £1.90. Now the daylight robbery seen everywhere to the public is from £2.99 for 5 and they are inferior useless rubbish type. That works out at approx £60/100. So who is making the money now? Spivs ! If you pay the price that is up to you. Personally I would rather do without. It's your choice.

[Rana Temporia]

Words like worth and value are very difficult to quantify. Something may have a perceived value but it is only actually worth what someone will pay for it at any given day and time. Currently things that might help keep you alive or stop you and your family getting ill are in demand, hence the silly prices for hand sanitizer and face masks. 

 

If you don't like the price of something don't pay it unless you have to. And once you don't have to don't ever use that supplier again. One of our local garages found that out as during the fuel strike in 2000/1 they doubled the price of their fuel. After the strike they lasted less than a month as no-one went there. Of course you could argue that they were providing a service and had resources that other people didn't but people don't like being ripped off. 

[Mac-_-]

Why would anyone want to pay over the odds, if indeedy they are over the odds (i'm a lazy git and haven't done the maths), ColinB makes good points few posts up. If they are extortionate, don't buy them, Modelrails Direct has some ata good price (got too love them), or do what i did and pre-order though hattons for the bulk option.

 

Why Modelrails Direct doesn't do bulk i'll never know, or that's where Mac would be getting his from  😆.

 

[VESPA]

The use of masks is very much in the forefront now. For what it is worth surgical theatre masks are only useful for around 7 minutes. Many operating theatres abandonded masks. Sanitiser is provided at most retail outlets now. There are currently 60m masks bought by the Government that are deemed useless and these are the type being flogged to unsuspecting people at high prices. No doubt these will be sold on a Government auction site and the poor public will buy them at inflated prices from cowboy spivs out to make a fast buck. The only worthwhile protection we had in theatres was a full suit with it's own air controlled system plugged into air pipes above the operating space. That was in orthopaedics. Wash your hands thoroughly and regularly, and wipe surfaces with a mild bleach solution and that will keep you safer than any mask. You can use bacterial hand washes or bacterial washing up liquid. Keep hand away from your face until you have washed them.Stay 2 mtres away from others as much as possible. Sorry to rabbit on from track prices but the point was the rip off of both PPE and track. Buy what you want at the price you are willing to pay but beware of what you buy as it may be all but a useless waste of money.

[atom3624]

How did the Government pay 15m for 5m masks anyway - I think they were the figures - price is ridiculous, partularly for such a large batch - were each sent DHL individually?

 

Al.

[Mac-_-]

Probably used the health services pensions pot, like the way they pulled the bankers out. Yea it's a rip off for masks, i actually bought a couple of washable ones made locally, and alot less than the disposable ones. 

[ColinB]

To avoid going further into PPE and eventually politics a really good example is Wrenn locos. I am old enough to have been around when you could buy them new. They were always expensive, but once they "shut up" as the owner retired, the prices shot up. An unrebuilt West Country loco went from £100 to £400, especially if it was blue. The unrebuilt Battle of Britain/West Country Wrenn locos still fetch premium price, which although are solid don't really match a modern Hornby loco for detail, but even the new Hornby West Country/Battle of Britain fetch premium prices secondhand.

[AndyMac1707817969]

Well when it comes to things like PPE and everything else, we used to make an awful lot in this country but then the Great British public decided they rather have cheaper goods made overseas. We introduced a minimum wage a ‘fair days work for a fair days pay’ but yet again the Great British public did not want to pay the cost of items made by people on UK being paid minimum wage they wanted much cheap stuff from abroad and did not seem to care how much those workers were paid or under what conditions they worked, as long as it cost them as little as possible. Companies in Britain move their manufacturing overseas for one reason only cheap labour to satisfy public demand.  Now they complain when suddenly it’s difficult to source items but of course the Great British public don’t blame themselves for being party to this situation as ever best point the finger elsewhere.

 

All rather hypocritical if you ask me. Maybe the expensive items were made in the UK with people being paid a living wage that is why they are three times the price instead of workers overseas expected to work for peanuts to satisfy what people in this country think is their right.

[ColinB]

@Andy_Mac I entirely agree with what you say but now we have got to the point where we can only get it from China. I regularly want small screws to fix my locos every time I do a search on EBay nobody in the UK does them, so I have to buy them from China. Blame it all on the "Iron Lady" she thought the future was "Shopping Malls" and we can see where that has got us, even the ones in the US are dying. Having said that some of our industries did need a big kick up the backside. I am a retired electronics/software design engineer and all through my career I seem to be always kicking my managers into doing the right thing, sadly quite often they didn't and people lost their jobs. 

Either way, this does not solve the issue of the expensive flexitrack. I don't know if Peco still make that in this country. Amazon is really expensive for some things, so it is always a good idea to search in other places.  

[AndyMac1707817969]

Not entirely Mrs Ts faulty. Mrs T a bit like Beeching, he did not close the railways, the people did when they stopped using them, she closed the factories when the public stopped wanting their goods, preferred cheaper things from abroad and quite frankly in a lot of cases at that time better made. Just trying to make the point that buyer rip of sellers a lot more than the other way round, just want stuff cheap and don’t care if someone can make a decent living from it. They just decide the price they want to pay and have no idea the costs involved. People today blame the government for no PPE but it’s really their fault in their ability not to support UK industry, don’t care about the long term damage or job losses.

 

Ah well the price of cheap goods, every citizen in the UK and many other countries have all contributed towards the creation of a new super power and probably the only one solvent country in the world. One that just seems to have a very different values than what they are used to. What a lovely present to leave their children and grandchildren and all down to their greed.

[Puffed Out]

The fact is cheaper goods are made overseas, wherever that maybe.  There were quite a few British Companies who moved into Eastern Europe, spurred on by the EU with what was essentialy bribes, under the pretence of resettlement costs. Still cheap labour there.

Anything attached to Electrics/Electonics are made in the far east.  Pick a product and see where it's made. Nissan wiring is made in China.

Bosch oil filters are made in Algeria. Cheap labour there.

I can remember the USA Gov, saying we will NEVER trade with a Communist Country, yet here they are, arguing over import tarrifs.

As for profiteering, depends where it's made and who's selling it. And is the quality any good, if you can find it.

Would you pay double for UK produced parts.  Higher labour costs, running costs, raw material costs. etc etc.

Is a new Hornby Train Set worth more in the box, or broken up and sold in seperate parts.

[ColinB]

To be quite honest most parts are made by robots, which generally are sourced from Germany. I used to work in automotive and when you walk through a car plant there are virtually no people except at "End of line" when the cars come off the line. It really comes down to cost of land, energy and those sort of things and sweeteners from Government. You do find in places like Turkey they use labour rather than machines as it is sometimes cheaper (machines can cost millions), so a lot of the time it comes down to EU or Government grants.

The last project I worked on before I retired, we got our PCBs from China, until I went to an exhibition and found you could get a better product sourced from the UK, surprise, surprise they both used the same machinery, but the guy in the UK didn't have all the transport costs. The trouble with products from China is that 10% is considered a reasonable failure rate and of course there is no such thing as intellectural property.

As someone said to me once it is much easier to "Outsource" to a supplier as it is not your fault when it all goes wrong whereas if you source from within there is nobody to blame other than yourself. So if your PPE don't arrive from China, it isn't your fault for picking the wrong supplier, you were just let down.