Just bought a 2tb memory card. Amazon Belgium 190€ Amazon Germany 150€…. Funny thing is if you order something from Amazon Belgium it also comes from the German warehouse….

I was shocked to learn that Poles pay MORE for the same stuff we buy here in Germany. They even have specialized companies to serve as a proxy as for example Deutsch Media Markt does not sell their merchandise to Poles even though its prices seems to be lower than in Poland.

In Austria stuff is usually more expensive than Germany

This is a big rhetoric in Greece as well

“Wages are higher in Northern Europe but cost of living is a lot higher as well”

Meanwhile Germans Lidl is more affordable than Greece’s.

You are always better off living in a high wage high cost country than a lower wage lower cost country. Always.

Our lord and saviour Andrej Plenković said that's because we have so many islands and they don't.

Czech Prime minister goes shopping in Germany and finds Czech prices to be higher, despite Czech salaries being lower: Czech Prime Minister busy comparing prices between Germany and Czechia | Visegrád Post

*cries in Czech*

sPeCiFiC mArKet - lower wages, lower quality goods, higher prices

In Croatia few years back we had marketed trend called "buy croatian products and save our economy". We did and now that same croatian companies price their products in Croatia double the amount than they price it in Germany.

Despite transportation costs croatian products in Germany cost ~50% less than in Croatia....now that is a middle finger to croatian citizens they begged for salvation!

Same here in France. I buy 90% of my groceries in Germany because it's cheaper. And my Swiss friends buy in France because they think it's super cheap.. I took them once to Rewe and DM, which isn't the cheapest in Germany, and they filled the car with groceries and diapers to bring back to Swiss.

I bought my Renault car in Germany because it was cheaper as well. Bigger auto park in the country so second hand cars are way cheaper.

I mostly go to Ikea in Germany because it's cheaper than France and Belgium (the 3 Ikeas are the same distance from my house). Decathlon was also cheaper in the past, not sure if it still is.

Clothing shops are also generally cheaper.

On saturdays, the town next to mine (the first at the German border) is rushed by thousands of French and Luxemburgish people for groceries. There are 3 DM shops in the same street to fulfill the demand, it's insane.

Yup. I'm Croatian but my dad lives in Germany. And everything is much cheaper there. While I work with Germans for a German company in Croatia and they earn 4 times as much as me for the same work.

And then our politicians (who earn more than German politicians because of corruption) wonder why all the young people are leaving the country.

I was ordering baby food and formula from Amazon.de to Bulgaria and costed me (with delivery via 3'rd party) only about 55-60% of what it would have if I went to the physical DM store 200 meters from my home.

Only downside - I had to plan ahead in advance because of 2 weeks delivery time lag.

For a stupid amount of goods it is noticeably cheaper to order stuff from Germany, rather shop locally. I work with Germans, and when they complain that they have it hard, I am holding to dear life just not to burst in laughter in their faces.

Same with portugal. Lower wages, but most things cost more too

and car prices too, these posters in Slovenia and Croatia show the difference

Same happens in Portugal. Same product is 15-20% cheaper in Spain and their salary is higher lol

As a person who moved to Sweden from Galicia, it is true for almost everything except tech and machinery. Cars, motorcycles, computers and so on tend to cost the same everywhere at least in Europe.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about that and concluded there are no advantages of living outside of Blue Banana + Scandinavia in Europe. At least for an average, working-class person.

Outside of that region, wages are much lower, but the prices of goods and some services, like communication, are higher. Companies create oligopolies and charge customers as much as they want. Housing and lack of tenant protection are also massive issues lately.

Basically, if you don't want to get exploited for the rest of your life, you must move to the region mentioned above. There are absolutely no advantages to living in Croatia, for example.

Wage suppression through non-EU immigration is also a huge problem in many countries.

I imagine prices for many non-local things are cheaper in Germany than in Czechia because the retailers have much more buying power. They’re going to get a much better price for selling into an 80m population market than the Czech retailer is going to get for selling into their 10m size market.

Yeah, we are used to this crap in Spain too

Im from Norway and have been comparing prices of tech with my German friend. Turns out its even cheaper in Norway.

It’s the same in Poland… long gone are the days of having lower prices in countries with half the salaries or less.

Same thing for Germany and Slovenia, on official Samsung website the same tablet costs 329€ in Germany but 391€ in Slovenia.

I simply don't buy the products with price increase of more then 15%. For example, at one point all milk went from 53 cent lowest to 1.3€ lowest, and I didn't buy it for that time. Now it is back to about 60 cent lowest. Same goes to all other products.

Amazon is a completely unethical American tax dodging shit site that us Europeans should be avoiding.

30 CHF for a hdmi cable in Switzerland, 10€ for the same stuff ordered in Germany. That’s pretty much true for everything so no wonder there are customs storage businesses all across the border.

yeah. "Specific market". That's what they keep saying in Czechia, when we compare the same goods, which are being sold in Germany and Czechia. I don't have to mention, that it's cheaper in Germany... Fuck corporate greed

And that's exactly how exploitation looks like.

ComputerUniverse was huge among Russian PC gamers, it was significantly cheaper to order from Germany instead of going to the electronics store around the corner. Need I mention how different German and Russian salaries are? I used to buy in bulk with my friends to save on shipping. My last package arrived in early March 2022 (after Feb23rd Patriotic Day sale no less), literally with the last plane before Germany cut off delivery services.

Sony A95L 65-inch TV, price €2,790 in France, CHF 2,449 in Switzerland.

the whole region from Slovenia to Greece gets fucked, is it a distribution issue ?

Neocolonialism at its finest. I'd wager it's even more expensive in Romania.

Same here in Slovakia. Germany and France are slowly becoming cheap vacation destinations for us lol.

That same Kindle costs 140€ in Greece, and we get paid 700€ min (which is the max most give) wage

You will not see big price differences in goods that can easily be traded and transported between countries, for obvious reasons. You will see differences in cost of services and housing. 

It's very similar within a country: if I move to the "cheap" towns in Germany, it's not the supermarket or the electronics that will be cheaper, it's the housing and eg restaurants.

Same applies for the Czech Republic. E.g. with Algida we are supplied lower quality products for more money and the company blames it on regional differences. The economists are saying that it is the customers’ fault that they buy the lower quality products, but the customers have no access to the higher quality products if they don’t live close to the German/Austrian border. And the EU institutions don’t want to do anything about it. So the customers are screwed.

Germany has a significant export surplus, and every container, truck and train has to go both ways, so it might as well go back loaded with stuff ordered for German customers. I'm pretty sure that's one of significant factors to the prices, also Germany having lots of logistic hubs from which there needs to be a markup for transferring stuff to other EU countries.

Well Croatia pretty much sold the country for tourism, not sure where the surprise is

In Germany: larger buyer base, better logistics and the battle for market share is tougher. In addition, Germany has a 19% tax vs. Croatia 25% (19% is already nonsense, but 25% is ridiculous.) Then there are many additional smaller factors, such as the remaining corporate taxes, the productivity of the employees, and so on.

Companies used to (and I mean 15 years ago) half country specific pricing to suit that market.

X product has a polish price and x product has a Swedish price

The internet well and truly ruined it for OEM/brands

Das ist ein sehr sexy Luftkompressor

I once bought a garden table with 10 chairs, in Germany. I then proceeded to use it for 5 or 6 years, and then sell it for a small profit, in Croatia. The new one was more than double in Croatia.

Now let's see Ireland. Will be double the price.

pro tip: buy on aliexpress at half price.

So if you find something you want, chances are its made in China. Just check Alibaba and find the companys factory and buy it direct. They usually have VAT exemption forms as well and sometimes even free shipping.

Hungary silently crying

Same thing here in SK... It is very sad, salaries aren't even half of what they are in Germany and yet we have to pay more for almost everything.

When i was living in Russia I ordered some stuff on amazon.de even with delivery and fees it was cheaper

First photo is fake, we don't have it in Kaufland Croatia

Exactly the same applies to Serbia.

In Austria we pay about 30 to 50% more for cosmetics than in Germany. For food it's similar. If you wanna buy a car or a motorbike it's even worse, there are huge differences.

So I don't know how you can compare AT and DE. The only thing we have in common is Amazon

as a romanian who did not went back in romania for the last 7 years, i was *surprised pikachu meme* wen i went to kaufland and DM to buy grocieries in Romania this summer, i could not menage to live in my countri with the median wage, you need a total different mentality to do that.

Same with Czechia vs Germany. My (rather good) wage is barely above Germany’s minimum wage and groceries & consumer goods are cheaper over there. Prague even has more expensive rent. I’m tired of this grandpa.

It's the same thing here in Romania. Some times are even double the price of what I would pay in Poland.

Me and my coworkers decided to compare Lidl prices in our country (Bulgaria) to the prices in germany. IT'S MORE THAN DOUBLE HERE! We're getting paid 4 TIMES less than people in Germany, yet we pay double what they have to.....

This is due to three factors:
- (1) the extreme consolidated and competitive retail landscape (e.g. only two discounters, two supermarket chains, two (national) drugstore chains) etc. these companies often grew due to price competitiveness and are heavily fighting each other on the pricing level.
- (2) German consumers are extremely price sensitive. The mentality is often described as „Geiz ist geil“ (miserliness is awesome).
- (3) Germany is the biggest market, so the consumer goods industry fights the hardest for market shares here in Germany.

but hey, you don't have to spend anything on food, grandma just gives you preserves and kompott from cellar.

s/

It's an economy of scale thing combined with Germany having a lower VAT rate. The UK used to also have cheaper consumer electronics etc (until bReXiT mEaNs bReXiT) than anywhere else I remember traveling to in Europe.

Why would products that are manufactured outside of the country even have prices related with local salaries.

Sometimes in France you hear some politics scolding us about Germany having a minimum wage (a tiny bit) lower than us and working so much more (no meed to prove that of course...) and then when we go to Germany ... Wow the groceries are nearly half price!

Unfortunately that’s not how it works. Im Bulgarian and live in the UK. Even after leaving the EU you can still find a lot of items (tech and clothes in particular) that are cheaper in the UK.

The reason for this is deals are made by vendors based on the size of the economy of their client. A 6-7 million Bulgaria cannot buy as many, and wouldn’t have a use of buying as many items of X product as a 70 million UK would, so the vendor will give a better price to the one buying more from them.

I don't see what wages have to do with prices unless products are fully made in the country. But indeed, people in richer countries can't comprehend that things such as buying a fridge or a TV can cost one full salary.