I agree with your points on the re-sold Chinese stuff. Such as drip tips, batteries and atomisers. I always order from China as the UK shops do seem a little expensive lol
Being honest though, a lot of people are kind of fearful of buying from abroad and well.. That is their problem, not mine or the re-sellers.
Thousands of UK eBay shops earn a living daily doing drop shipping, some of them drop-ship Amazon products, others DealExtreme etc. One search on Google Products would often result in a price cheaper than the Buy It Now auctions some people purchase. Yet again though, that is their fault for not shopping around.
If I had an online shop, I would do the same thing. Whether it is dishonest or not, basically this is how capitalism works. I know people in real life who go shopping in the supermarket and buy these special offer items without even realising they are saving 1p yet purchasing twice as much as they would usually. Or even better, those people who go to shopping malls and purchase an item in the first shop they look in, seven shops later they find the same item for half price and if they had looked online it would of been cheaper again.
I understand your point, but lets be realistic here. Unless your some sort of saint or have no idea how to run a business.. Your going to charge as much for your items as possible, and if the customers come to you and get 'ripped-off' that is not really your fault hehe
I guess there is always that argument that TW and others have become pretty big and quite quickly, hiring staff at above minimum wage is going to eat into your profits. Especially when they are being paid triple or even more than the same worker in the east. The costs to run a business over here, I think it is fair to say, more costly than the same type of business in China would be.
So even if they did lower their prices to a more reasonable level, I doubt it would be as dramatic as some of the China prices. Plus if it puts their businesses future at risk due to a huge loss in profits.. I am not so sure I would like to see that.
So yeah, I am sure TW would prefer it if people like me and you purchased from them more regularly and at the higher prices. Obviously this is not going to happen as long as we can get the same quality stuff from China for less than half the price. So if TW etc want to take us as customers away from the eastern distributors/resellers they will obviously have to adapt and evolve as a business.
If the products they sold were manufactured in the UK by UK workers then I am sure more of us would shop there, even if it is more pricey. I am sure they are aware of this and once they have enough money, I am sure they will be setting up a site to manufacture their own goods. If not, then someone else will.
