GH3 EU retailer leaned on by Panasonic to prevent affordable UK GH3?!

The GH3 is just waaay to expensive for what it is anyway.
£1200 for body only?

I think it just makes the BMC look better every day
 
Fresno Bob said:
The GH3 is just waaay to expensive for what it is anyway.
£1200 for body only?

I think it just makes the BMC look better every day
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Well it's better than the £1600 it was only last week. The BMC and GH3 are different cameras for different tasks.
 
So Wex and CVP are now displaying what was the originally forecast UK price? £1200 would work out to be about the cost of the GH1 and 2 at launch ( if you could have found a supplier for body only ), so no big price increase really. If the price drop follows most of the other Lumix cameras, then it should be half that in 6-9 months.

Surely under EU law this kind of price fixing must be illegal, surely?
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I don't know, Disneyland Paris have been getting away with it for years ;-)
 
AdrianF said:
I don't know, Disneyland Paris have been getting away with it for years ;-)
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There is no other European Disney so they, EU Disney haven't broken laws for charging more than in the US. You are legally allowed to have US cheap versus Europe Ripoff, but to have a Ripoff of one EU state versus another is an extraordinarily serious crime which Panasonic were heading towards then u-turned from.

I'm proud to have pointed out to Panasonic their potential law breaking, I'm glad they reversed it. You legally cannot get away with charging £1000 in Germany and £1600 in the UK (before this forum post), which Panasonic was trying just last week, without breaking price fixing EU legislation.

This totally embodies the situation with Panasonic, Wex and CVP only last week especially given sales in the Netherlands and Germany ceased:
An anti-competitive agreement doesn’t have to be formal, written down or even discussed to be illegal.
‘Shared understandings’, ‘gentleman’s agreements’ and ‘concerted practices’ that clearly restrict competition can also be illegal. Concerted practices are where businesses cooperate without actually reaching an agreement or decision.
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https://www.gov.uk/competition-law-unfair-pricing-agreements

The truth is Panasonic at £1199 are still ripping off UK customer's off for just short of £200 but at least it's not as insulting as the prices last week.
 

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The ONLY rip off is if you buy it, I seriously do not know why this thread even exist...... When they price the 5d Markiii at $3500 no one was buying it, now at $2800 the sales are picking up. Vote with your wallet instead of a camera that honestly as of now doesn't even exist.....
 
This threads exists thanks to P13 getting off his arse and doing something about it, rather than complaining on a forum but letting it slide.
As I've found out growing up in England, we are routinely shafted on price but can rarely get ourselves heard. It's just the "done" thing - and retailers know it.
 
There is no other European Disney so they, EU Disney haven't broken laws for charging more than in the US. You are legally allowed to have US cheap versus Europe Ripoff, but to have a Ripoff of one EU state versus another is an extraordinarily serious crime which Panasonic were heading towards then u-turned from.
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The reference was to Disneyland Paris making deals unavailable to UK residents, which are available to other EU states. The only way around it, was to book these deals from one of the other countries. Not exactly what you're saying Panasonic are doing, but similar.

The UK always gets stuffed on prices and weather. That's all part of the joy of this little island :-)
 
In Canada, prices of most products are 30-40% more than the United States. UK products are often 100-150% more ie Hunter Wellingtons ! But there are numerous factors that affect pricing and it's not always the manufacturers fault. Some of the extra costs may pay for free healthcare!Cross border shopping is very popular now in Canada and more Canadian stores are going bankrupt.

From Moneyville:

The relationship between a stronger dollar and consumer prices is complex. Here are some of the factors that retailers claim influence the price difference between Canadian and American products.
Higher labour costs in Canada
Import tariffs (Canadian book import regulations allow American publishers to tack a 10 per cent mark-up on top of the U.S. price of a book sold in Canada)
Higher freight costs (the population of Canada is about the same as California but our geographical area is roughly that of the continental U.S.)
Bilingual labeling requirements
The time and cost to update price listings and catalogues
Import contracts are often signed weeks or months ahead of the product arriving on store shelves.

There’s also the tendency for retailers and wholesalers to simply absorb profits or losses due to changes in the exchange rate. For this reason, the fact that cheaper consumer goods are arriving from the United States or China does not mean prices automatically decrease for Canadian shoppers.

http://www.moneyville.ca/blog/post/1144281--why-products-are-more-expensive-in-canada
 
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AdrianF said:
The reference was to Disneyland Paris making deals unavailable to UK residents, which are available to other EU states. The only way around it, was to book these deals from one of the other countries. Not exactly what you're saying Panasonic are doing, but similar.

The UK always gets stuffed on prices and weather. That's all part of the joy of this little island :-)
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Sorry I didn't understand that reference but I see what you mean now I didn't know they did that, get them reported!
 
I don't think Konijnenberg's actions are aimed against UK citizens. I am now on a satellite ip address and I don't get to see the GH3 offer either. I can look it up on Google but when I click on the link and land on Konijnenberg's site, I get to see an "article not found". But I get to see the same on photospecialist.co.uk, .de, and .fr. The ip address I use isn't assigned to any country in the various ip-location databases so to each of these sites I look like a foreigner and the offers they are making are aimed at local residents only appararently.
Also my definition of price fixing is when competetors agree to keep their prices above a certain level, like a few LED screen producers did and were penalized for in the US. Panasonic on it's own can't fix prices, if tomorrow another brand comes with a product similar to the GH3, but much cheaper, Panasonic will have no other choice than to decrease its price of the GH3.
Also how much interest would Panasonic have in pushing UK dealers to stay above a certain minimum price? That wouldn't be good for Panasonic because for them it will mean less sales. The smaller the profit margin of their resellers, the better for Panasonic. So I would say the only ones being guilty of higher UK prices, are the UK retailers. And you can punish them for that by purchasing your GH3 in the US. Ask friends or relatives who travel to the US to buy the GH3 for you, throw away the packing, and bring it back to the UK. I've done it like that with the GH2 last year because I wanted a US version without the 30min record limit and it worked fine.
 
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