Our Treasure Islands - Why is the UK so expensive?

I really hate it when I lose a USB Flash Drive or when I take it to a place, to copy things, and by the time I finish, my whole USB Drive is filled with Viruses and Malware. This is so very annoying and frustrating, especially when you consider that I do that around 4-5 times a day, and I'm sure my clients would not appreciate it, if I started spreading viruses around... This meant that I have to cart around 5-6 USB Flash Drives with me at any given time, and also cleaning these, everyday, upon my return to the office, which is, frankly, a huge pain in the butt...

A few years ago, I found a solution to my problem, a USB Flash Drive with a Write-Protect Switch... I used to have that switched on to the write protect side, when I used that on Client's machines, and turn it off, when using it to copy files from my machines.

This worked so well, that I bought 5 of these drives... But sadly, these drives were not the best manufactured devices in the world. The quality was shoddy, and 2 of them just refused to read, write, format, work, breath after 2 weeks. One of them was lost, I left it at a client's shop. And the other 2, served me well for over 6 months until they succumbed to the rigours of daily use, putting them in my pocket with loose change, dropping and accidentally standing on them, attaching them to my keyring, sitting on them, etc... Well, we just say, that they really did not have an easy life... 

And since then, I've been looking for a similar, reasonably priced, USB drives with a write protect feature. That is until the other day, when I came across those babies on Amazon.com.

I tried to order 10 of these, but sadly, the sellers on Amazon.com would not post these to the UK, and all attempts to find these in the UK failed. So I thought, I will just have to try eBay.co.uk and see what we can find..

The good news is, I did find these at 5 times the price. I can buy an 8GB drive for $16.00, I would have to pay over $80.00 to buy a 2GB version in the UK. And seeing that all these are made in China, I still don't get the wild variation and discrepancy in price. Needless to say, I will be cleaning my existing USB Drives, everyday, for a long time to come... 

 

The reason behind the Blog title, is price fixing in the UK - even though we, supposedly, have a FREE and Open Market, with Healthy Competition. All the participants seem to sell the same items at the same price, which tells me that there is a Price Fixing Cartel working behind the scene. If you don't believe me, just check the price of a loaf of bread, a tin of beans, a bus ticket, a train ticket, a plane ticket, a package holiday, a computer, a litre of petrol, gas and electricity, your weekly shop, etc. etc.. You will see a difference (in pennies), And guess what, all the participants are laughing at us, all the way to the bank... And the regulators, are just sitting there regulating...

http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/07/why_is_the_uk_s.html