Amaz(on)ing price differences

Having heard Abbado's Mahler at Titian's on Saturday, I thought I'd check out the box set he had. On Amazon UK, £100 - well, £99.99. However, on Amazon DE, it was €94.99 (£63.24) - and, when the order is over €20, postage from Amazon DE is free, and the Germans always knock off the VAT (15%) for sending to non-EU Switzerland. Amazon UK must be doing very nicely...

 

Interesting tip Tony - I'll remember to check Amazon.de and Amazon.fr now before buying, especially classical stuff. When the same box set probably costs £120 or more in the UK high street (if you could actually find it in any high street shop ) then you realise just how much money the record companies are making!

Michael.

 

I find that Amazon.com often works out cheaper than co.uk, even after the cost of shipping. Plus, Amazon.com has far superior availability and range of titles, and has many more features on its website.

 

I never use Amazon (for buying any CDs anyway). They are basically high-street prices. As I've said several times before, I use www.mdt.co.uk for just about anything new - standard full price is £11 or £11.50 (sometimes up to £13 for really stingy labels like ECM, CPO or some Sony), but they normally have sales on many labels, so I hardly ever buy anything over £10 for a full-price disc. Otherwise the Britannia record club, or a second-hand site I'm not telling you about!

 

OK, i know it's only one example, but bear with me,

I picked the first CD that appeared on the MDT homepage, Bartok Sonatas, so i didn't try and connive a specific CD for my purposes:

http://secure.mdt.co.uk/MDT_EC/index_ec.htm

£11.50 as you pointed out.

Amazon.co.uk - £13.99:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos...57497/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_9_1/202-8528740-4768668

- High St prices on this occasion (though not always)

Amazon.com - $14.99:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t..._1_1/002-9116137-2062457?v=glance&s=classical

I work that out to be £8.15

Buy a few CD's at a time, which i'm sure you do anyway, and it's still significantly cheaper even after shipping costs.

Thanks for the MDT reminder again though. I'll keep an eye on that. I can get vouchers for them through points collected on my credit card as well, so could be useful.

cheers

 

And to show that Amazon.co.uk can be worth perusal:

Varese - Complete Works:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t..._1_1/002-9116137-2062457?v=glance&s=classical

£8.99

Exactly the same thing on MDT is £11.00 (sorry no link - but the catalogue no is 4754872)

Just been checking MDT's special offers though which are quite good, but the site is not great if you were after a spot of browsing. I'm probably just biased in favour of the site i am most familiar with perhaps?

 

I use Amazon.co.uk to buy most of my CDs, DVDs and books. It's generally cheaper than high-street prices IME and the service and delivery times (to Portugal) are great. Amazon.com is a no-no for me unless .co.uk doesn't stock it (eg region 1 DVDs) because in Portugal you get stung for the import duty and VAT every time - basically adding 22% to the total cost (including shipping).

Will remember to check out amazon.de and amazon.fr more often. Have ordered from both in the past for things that .co.uk didn't have.

Michael.

 

Just done an interesting exercise - compared the price for the last (new) order I made, from Britannia.
Total order: £239.91 (including 2.00 postage), of which "Classical": £182.96

I tried getting comparison prices from Amazon.co.uk, .com, .de and mdt. MDT had all 24 discs/sets (included 1 9disc set of Liszt piano and 1 5disc set of Beethoven symphs). Amazon.co.uk and amazon.de had only 18 of these and amazon.com had only 17 (a slightly different set). Of the 13 titles available from all sites the prices were:
Britannia: £111.98 -> £113.98 if I include all the 2.00 postage
MDT: £186.50 (post free)
Amazon.de: Eur 280.42 -> £191.28 (unsure about postage or possible VAT adjustments)
Amazon.co.uk: £204.87 (post free)
Amazon.com: $276.78 + $36.36 postage. AFAIK this would also incur about 22% duty + VAT. At £1 = $1.78 -> £214.62!

This order was of course from titles available, and at a good price, at Britannia, so it does rather self-select, but was still instructive. If I'd taken an MDT list, Britannia would probably show up quite a few missing titles, and timing it when sales were on would show them much closer. And MDT still beats all the amazon sites - even with none of the discs currently at sale prices!

 

Ouch. That'd be about five times as much as I've ever spent on CDs on one go