161–170 of 402 posts
For American readers: VAT is included in the shelf price, rather than tacked on at the register like sales taxes are in the US. Upside: fewer surprises at the register. Downside: it’s less visible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
wow, Metro AG's stock is doing horribly this year. but they're supposedly raking in tons of cash from Austria? EDIT: SPAR Group, Inc. is doing very badly as well. I think this theory is highly suspect
If they're doing so poorly, why are they giving such steep discounts in Germany and not charging Austrian prices to bump up their margins? Are they stupid to leave so much money on the table?
Prices should be slightly higher in Austria, because the VAT (Mehrwertsteuer) is 20% for most consumer goods, and 10% for food, vs. Germany’s 19% and 7%, but not as outlandishly so as Mario’s data have shown. For American readers: VAT is included in the shelf price, rather than tacked on at the register like sales taxes are in the US. Upside: fewer surprises at the register. Downside: it’s less visible.
This is a home made problem for the most part, but there is very little appetite to do something about it. Austria in many ways is drowning in very expensive regulation, has high taxation even for grocery store workers.
Truly shows how Free Markets are the most efficient
That's nice if we forget about the ECB printing money like there's no tomorrow.
A big contribution to this is the government's policy of heavily subsidizing various costs: Energy, rent, even groceries were subsidized via various vouchers and payments for a while, and now there's even discussions of "capping interest rates" – of course inflation won't go down if the purchasing power remains inflated!
Note that I'm not concluding that this is necessarily a bad development: It might just be an effective way of redistribution – but only time will tell, and personally I'm glad to not be part of the experiment.
Had a "oh shit" moment reading the article. I live in Germany, and of course buy groceries. The "discount" games seem very obvious now. Food expenses have risen very significantly recently. Great article, I hope this gains more traction and or legal ramifications for the grocers.
REWE and Edeka have trained me to only buy “fancy” (Mövenpick, Cremissimo) ice cream when it’s 1,99 EUR, not “normal” price of 3,99, and to prefer whichever is “on sale”. And I detest that decent ice cream only comes in ridiculously-shaped thick plastic that’s only good for chucking in the Gelbe Sack, not in waxed paperboard or at least a sensible container to reuse for other things.
Lots of comments here saying Germany is 30 percent cheaper than Austria. Isn’t living in Vienna much cheaper than living in big cities in Germany like Berlin and Munich? So overall it’s still a better deal to live in Vienna than in Munich.
Rent is expensive in Berlin for sure, but supermarkets are still way cheaper than Austria
This is a great thread, and it shows the power of smart, tech-capable citizens.
>it shows the power of smart, tech-capable citizens Consumers in Austria who travel abroad/to Germany often, already knew they were getting scammed for a long time now, but couldn't prove it and now they can, so the more important question is what will come out of it, as the data shows the big retailers clearly cooperating on price fixing. My guess, nothing, as the government regulators who are supposed to watch over…
How was it not blatantly obvious that something is off if the exact same product from an Austrian manufacturer (not owned an international conglomerate) is consistently 20-30% cheaper in a grocery store in Berlin than it is in Vienna, minutes away from the factory where it's produced?
I'm honestly surprised that it took the recent inflation for people in Austria to get wise to the fact that they've been overpaying on groceries for at least a decade.
Especially in the western federal states bordering Germany I would have expected people to regularly go grocery shopping across the border (although supermarket prices aren't uniform within Germany; I have no anecdata about Bavaria, for example).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no point comparing across countries
Commodities are routinely compared worldwide, and peanuts could be considered commodities. They are certainly closer to commodities than to services etc., even when packaged for the individual customer in fancy wrapping. I would understand your argument if you were talking about services.
Of course doing do would be disastrous for the supermarkets, so I can imagine they would fight and lobby politicians vigorously.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>it shows the power of smart, tech-capable citizens Consumers in Austria who travel abroad/to Germany often, already knew they were getting scammed for a long time now, but couldn't prove it and now they can, so the more important question is what will come out of it, as the data shows the big retailers clearly cooperating on price fixing. My guess, nothing, as the government regulators who are supposed to watch over…
> Well, about 6 years ago, the 3 big telecom operators in Austria raised the prices together at the exact same time, and the government body in charge of overseeing these things said they have no proof that the 3 operators colluded together for price fixing and it could just be a coincidence, case closed. I would love a citation for that.
[1] https://helpv2.orf.at/stories/1684683/index.html
[2] https://helpv2-orf-at.translate.goog/stories/1684683/index.h...