Worried..

[Habana-Habanos]

Hi guys,

Well recently I spotted the post on razored of bar codes, this is annoying me actually more than worrying but does this mean that buying from duty free guys like 1001 basically means we can not officially prove these are real? Quite sad really meaning in U.K we have to get whacked by the stupid law and pay tax which makes the cigars not expensive but comparing to the main dealers "a bomb" just to enjoy some cigars.

Laters..

[MaledettoToscano]

Hi HH,

there was a thread on this a short while back, see here (http://www.ukcigarforums.com/showthread.php?t=2528).

[Habana-Habanos]

Hi HH,

there was a thread on this a short while back, see here (http://www.ukcigarforums.com/showthread.php?t=2528).

Yeah I've read it which started off my question.

[MaledettoToscano]

Sorry, I though maybe you hadn't.

Going back to your question, I agree that UK taxes play some role in the fact that the boxes are razored off, but I would argue it is not the only thing in play here.

reigndrop explained in the thread that this happens to stop Habanos and Altadis tracking distributors selling outside their region. I have seen the same argument before elsewhere and it seems a plausible reason.

So, assuming that is indeed why the codes are removed, then the reason rests in Altadis and Habanos in the first place. In my experience this is pretty common business sense: if you (company A) sell goods to a distributor (say in Asia) you want to make sure they don't re-sell and undercut the authorized distributor of a different region (say Europe or N.America). The price difference might be tax, but it is often influenced by the local market prices, perceived value in a specific market and so on. So is it only because of taxes?

To see what makes the difference it would be interesting to calculate if the price differences really are only related to tax, but taxes give me a headache :biggrin1:. My feeling is that this might be true for the top brand Cubans, but once you get to the middle and lower price range, that does not seem to add up. The more I look at prices outside the UK the more I feel that taxes are used as an excuse to justify inflated and unjustified prices here.

I have read in this forum that we have close to 100% taxes on cigars here; assuming this is the case I would expect that the same cigar costs 2 times, maybe 2.5 times as much in the UK as it does in countries with no or little taxes. Let's take the prices you pay from CGars here in the UK (which is in my experience the cheapest for most brands) and a foreign counterpart.

Oliva Serie O Double Toro:

cigars.com (USA) (10) for 59.95 $ =36.55 £

CGars (10) for 124 £ i.e. almost three and a half times (339%) the original price.

J.Piedra Cazadores:

PuroExpress (25) for 33€ i.e. 29£

CGars (25) for 135£ i.e. 4.5 times more expensive.

Clearly the extra 100% tax does not explain the price difference.

With that I am not saying that CGars specifically is at fault, they are still the cheapest of the bunch. I suspect that Habanos/Altadis but also the distributors for the NC sell their products at a higher price here because we are used to pay high prices for cigars anyway (us suckers!). (It would be nice to have some insight from someone in the business on this.)

So yes, taxes play a role, but looking at the examples above it seems that they're not the only reason by far.

[Habana-Habanos]

Very very interesting post sucked me in for a few minutes, but yes I would love to agree that you have a very nice point. Countries are likely using tax as an answer to why they are really expensive here but really it can be many other aspects.

-HH

[daverave999]

I do wonder about cgars pricing though, e.g.

Chinchalero Picadillos 24s

Cgars £94.99 (http://www.cgarsltd.co.uk/chinchalero-picadillos-p-2748.html)
Cigar-connoisseur £68.00 (http://www.cigar-connoisseur.co.uk/acatalog/Chinchalero_cigars.html)

That ain't tax as they are both UK-based.

[Habana-Habanos]

I do wonder about cgars pricing though, e.g.

Chinchalero Picadillos 24s

Cgars £94.99 (http://www.cgarsltd.co.uk/chinchalero-picadillos-p-2748.html)
Cigar-connoisseur £68.00 (http://www.cigar-connoisseur.co.uk/acatalog/Chinchalero_cigars.html)

That ain't tax as they are both UK-based.

Definitely one of the aspects is greed or sorry should I say profit desires.

[MaledettoToscano]

I do wonder about cgars pricing though, e.g.

Chinchalero Picadillos 24s

Cgars £94.99 (http://www.cgarsltd.co.uk/chinchalero-picadillos-p-2748.html)
Cigar-connoisseur £68.00 (http://www.cigar-connoisseur.co.uk/acatalog/Chinchalero_cigars.html)

That ain't tax as they are both UK-based.

:rolleyes: I bow to your experience Sir Dave :hail:

Didn't even know of Cigar Connoisseur :redface:!