[Closed] Biks-Discount.de - No GBP

Makes no sense at all.. nothing's going to change for a wee bit over 2 years..

Can't be anything more than a political statement 🙁

Yeah, I noticed that at the weekend.

You can't blame them: Moneycorps have stopped trading GBP for foreign currency online until the situation stabilises, so it's no surprise small, retailers have taken the same move.

Pound is just a teeny tiny bit volatile at the minute in case no one had noticed. So t would be costing them money to offer a rate. Business decision more than anything else.

There is no way to keep up with a crashing currency without a lot of risk. They just transferred it to you guys. I was looking for UK sites that didn't do the oz$ conversion for you myself

Is it not just the option to view in GBP? my payments are always in euros

euain - Member - Quote
Makes no sense at all.. nothing's going to change for a wee bit over 2 years..

Apart from the fact GBP to EUR FX rates have dropped almost 10% in a week.

They could revalue all their GBP prices but given how volatile the rates are they probably don't have the time, energy or system capability to react to the rate changes.

Why should they take a ~10% hit on their money. Counter argument is of course loss of UK sales as buyers go elsewhere. They obviously prefer to be protected from the FX volatility

[i]Can't be anything more than a political statement[/i]

It's a business decision - what fixed exchange rate would you offer on the pound today or even for the next hour?

Makes no sense at all.. nothing's going to change for a wee bit over 2 years..

Can't be anything more than a political statement

Makes perfect sense, the £ has been in free fall since Friday morning, every time they sell something in £ that money sits in their account losing it's value, meanwhile they still have bills and wages to pay in Euro's and Dollars. Also they'd have to re-price everything as the £ slips, it's dropped from $1.47 to $1.31, so expect similar ~12% price rises.

Given that, forcing buyers to do the currency exchange upfront makes a lot of sense.

No politics involved.

Shirley, if something costs €100 on their website, you need to pay £120 for it instead of £135 a week ago?

They still get the Euros they need, you get a better price ? The price change is at the UK end.

[quote=rickmeister ]Shirley, if something costs €100 on their website, you need to pay £120 for it instead of £135 a week ago?
They still get the Euros they need, you get a better price ? The price change is at the UK end.

I'm guessing you voted leave...

Other way round. The £ is worth less, so you need more of them than you did to buy the same amount last week.

So £100 bought €100 last week, would now be £110 buys €100 this week.

....numbers are obviously pulled out of my arse for demonstration purposes.

Correct, Im back to front, not a fat cat or city bank hedge fund jockey

Obviously...

Yeah spotted that too. Can't imagine many shops that sell to here would want to accept GBP right now. Wave bye bye to cheap components from Europe folks.

[i]Wave bye bye to cheap components [s]from Europe[/s] folks.[/i]

FTFY.

The UK based discounters will have to buy Euros or Dollars to restock.

The UK based discounters will have to buy Euros or Dollars to restock.

hmmm - except for uk made stuff by blokes in sheds using raw material excavated by hand and with no transport, living or tool costs. Luckily that will sort us just fine for components..... oh wait.. 😉

So we'll have small buffer of existing stock now though.
SPEND NOW!!

Funnily enough I noticed this morning and asked them...

Thank you for your inquiry and your interest in our products.
Currently payment in GBP is not possible. So the prices displayed should be the € prices.

Best regards,

H&S Bike-Discount GmbH

I saw this last week too.

Damn, should have stockpiled some bits before the vote... power of hindsight eh 😆

buy in euros then. it'll cost you a few percent more for your CC/Paypal of course. Penalties of being from that foreign separatist UK and all that

Wonder what Canyon will do? They used to have a floating price that varied with exchange rate but the last couple of years have had a fixed GBP price. Which means any UK sales now are worth 10% or more less than a week ago.

rickmeister - Member

Correct, Im back to front, not a fat cat or city bank hedge fund jockey

Obviously...

It's simple maths my dear, but clearly its not your fault, its obviously the banks fault you can't grasp it.

Too risky for them as currency is so volatile, it could jump or fall a lot in any given day. Bike Verbier have priced in Swiss Francs for many years now

With any luck after Leave we'll be able to properly tax these offshire sellers which undermine our uk sellers via tax dodges allowed under EU law

Weaker currencies encourage and support local business at the expense of imports, as we have a trade defifict that's good for the uk as a whole. It costs us a bit more in the short term.

Just email them and negotiate a special agreement and see how that goes, seems to be the plan in general 🙂

With any luck after Leave we'll be able to properly tax these offshire sellers which undermine our uk sellers via tax dodges allowed under EU law

Bloody offshire sellers, coming to our shires and selling their dodgy goods!

Just email them and negotiate a special agreement and see how that goes, seems to be the plan in general

Tell them they are all a bunch of morons [i]then[/i] try and negotiate a special agreement.

With any luck after Leave we'll be able to properly tax these offshire sellers which undermine our uk sellers via tax dodges allowed under EU law

It is up to our government to ensure our domestic, economic environment is capable of competing with foreign sellers. It doesn't do anyone any good to throw your toys out of the pram and shout "...well, I'm not playing then".

Also look at the proliferation of far East, discount sellers, which the leavers are hoping we will open up more to. If we can't compete with sellers within our own economic locale, we won't be able to compete with far East sellers who have far greater control over production and much lower overheads.

Weaker currencies encourage and support local [s]business[/s] [I]manufacturers[/I] at the expense of imports

Ftfy, of course the issue is we don't have a huge manufacturing base in the UK any more and of the ones we do have almost none produce from UK sourced (our non $ traded) materials so the product costs more to produce and becomes more expensive (in gbp) to sell though admittedly that [b]may[/b] still translate to a better export price in certain currencies (chances are low though since margin is added as % of cost not a flat price so adding in costs earlier produces anew exponentially higher final sale price).

As far as most businesses are concerned the only thing they will see is an increased cost of supply unless labour cost in GBP decreases as GBP wholesale prices are at best going to hold steady but likely go up (as a result of increased raw materials cost)

But yes you're right, if you look at a low cost labour market producing largely is own raw materials, say China or Egypt a low forex rate is good for exports.
[the US is a bit special case as it produces large amounts of commodity traded raw materials, so is able to influence many major commodity rates - oil being the main one - and is also insulated to some extent by $ being the trading currency of choice]

There not going to want to deal with the messy conversions as thing jump up and down.

I always pay in Euros on Halifax clarity anyway.

I noticed that. They did it on Friday morning. I ordered a few bits from them on Thursday afternoon and on Friday morning I got an email saying they had to cancel my order due to a 'system error' and they refunded me.

e don't have a huge manufacturing base in the UK any more

Not this rubbish again, the UK manufactures plenty of stuff. Also yes imported costs of raw materials might go up, but it then depends what portion of the total product cost they are as to whether it makes a big impact or not.

Maybe, just maybe we should support UK shops / companies over those in Germany or where ever. You can hardly moan your high street is hollowed out when you are buying from elsewhere.

Maybe, just maybe we should support UK shops / companies over those in Germany or where ever. You can hardly moan your high street is hollowed out when you are buying from elsewhere.

All good practice. At least we'll be primed for when Chainreaction is selling to us for two pounds to the euro out of a united Ireland in five years' time.

It'll be like booze cruises to Calais in the 80/90s. Driving over to Ireland, filling your boot to the brim with chainsets, and then lying your way through customs saying they're for personal use 🙂

Chainreaction is being bought by Wiggle.

With any luck after Leave we'll be able to properly tax these offshire sellers which undermine our uk sellers via tax dodges allowed under EU law

Properly taxed how? They already pay VAT to the UK as per EU law (I know, the EU doing something sensible, who knew) so you're proposing perhaps that whenever a British person buys something that a portion of the profit is sent back the UK as taxes? You going to extend that to the bakery down the road perhaps? What about Wiggle? Are you happy to send the (literally) tens of pounds profit they make from me to the Luxembourg government? You may be but I bet they just stop selling to markets where it's not worth the fuss.

You do see the difference between bike-discount who sell a product in Germany to UK customers and Starbucks who sell a product in the UK to UK customers but ensure they make very little profit by buying their floor cleaner at 1M euros a bottle from Liechtenstein I assume? Or do you think Germany is a tax haven?

Ignoring for a minute that the moment the UK leaves the EU, the VAT from EU sellers will dry up (unless there's a deal in place to cover it) it's never going to work. The only thing the UK could do is put big old taxes on imports as they do with the US etc now. This will, of course, mean more people buy local than from the EU but that only works if there's no free trade agreement as you can't impose those rules within the EEA.

I think you may be able to legislate a physical business hiding profits in offshores but you'll never be able to tax a physical business operating by mail order in the same way as the profits are being taxed locally. It's almost like you've not really thought much about this but are just throwing concepts around like a chimp.

With any luck

Neatly sums up the amount of planning that the leave side did for the event of actually winning.

euain, fancy doing a bit of currency trading with me? I get to set all the rates, but promise not to make any political statements.

Hopefully these sort of 'messages' will be reaching everyone in the UK soon.

Some of the things they said would happen, are happening it's not fear mongering it IS real, and it IS happening.

Will it get worse? That really depends on the next few months, the 'market' demands certainty - if we thrash out a EEA+ type deal with the EU than the financial element of the problem will almost go away, it’s the unknown that caused the fall against the Euro which, I think after so much talk about deals with the EU is climbing at bit today, but the fall against the Dollar will be worse, the Brexit issue effects all of Europe so the £ and € are falling against $ and most commodities are traded in $ including oil, which in turn effects the price of everything.

The nasty business of people screaming racial obscenities on the buses - well that's a whole other problem, I think the Genie is out of the bottle now, we’ve gone back 30 years.

Chainreaction is being bought by Wiggle.

Can see this one being a future internet/international retailing case study:

"Anti - competitive move in domestic market results in accidental Eurozone based outlet"

Can see this one being a future internet/international retailing case study:

"Anti - competitive move in domestic market results in accidental Eurozone based outlet"

CRC is in NI, Wiggle is in Portsmouth, unless the reunification of Ireland is seriously on the cards (it may be, but Scotland is more likely and far from certain), then neither is in the EU/Eurozone if we leave.

Which in itself could be a problem as I guess their expansion plans are more international than domestic.

Not this rubbish again, the UK manufactures plenty of stuff

Hardly plenty is it, otherwise we'd have a trade surplus from selling all the stuff we manufacture rather than buying loads in.

I'd also lay good odds (though I lack any actual numbers so appreciate this is worth about as much as £350m/wk) that the UK [I]assembles[/I] a lot of stuff but manufactures a relatively small amount.

@atlaz if we don't have a free trade deal hmrc will charge import duty and vat which we in the uk will collect. If that makes uk sellers more attractive thats excellent news, if we have a deal then we charge as agreed

Wiggle HQ Portsmouth - distribution now in the midlands? Blexit ?

No idea if unification seriously on the cards - some would like to exploit no doubt

[i]If that makes uk sellers more attractive thats excellent news[/i]

and if it doesn't?