Prices for apple products in the CIS

Hello.

I asked questions about the price of an apple in the CIS several times in the comments. I have never (!) Answered. Just put a minus comment and that's it. But I care about this question. And the question is simple.

Constantly in the comments / posts they write, something like I am not going to pay 2-3 times more expensive than in the US. Here is a proof (many agree on the voices) for today.
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I myself live in Ukraine, and I have never seen such prices. And in Russia, and like the duty is less. Do people fool like that? In this went to Google. And I typed a request to buy an apple in Russia. The first site I got here was advertised here before, so I think this is not an advertisement, it was a z-store.

I studied the prices.

I will give the most expensive example. Consider that the more expensive a thing is, the smaller the price difference is, I think this is understandable (this does not apply to small things).

And so, an example.

Cheapest Mac mini
The price in apple US is $ 599.00 + tax (this is such a tax, varies from state to state) - we take the average - 8% - total + ≈48 ≈ $ 647
Price in the store of Russia - 26 990 rubles . Google says it is ≈ $ 928 .

Again, Google told me that 928 is just 1.43 times more than 647 . No 2 or 3 is not here.

Then I wanted to write more about the customs fee (which you still have to pay if you are honest), but I realized that in Russia and Ukraine it is very different (and in favor of Russia).

But there are enough of these small calculations to firmly say - “Where do you buy 2-3 times more expensive? !!”

I write in my personal blog, because I do not consider this information worthy of the main page, but I can always give you a link to it, if necessary.

If you have comments, I am waiting for you in the comments.

UPD is a very interesting article by a friend of mine about buying an iPad in the USA. If anyone is interested in tsiferki about legal delivery to Ukraine. Who is still too lazy to read (and there is fascinating and informative) - This is the final picture. I hope he does not mind.


UPD below is very reasonable text from TerrorDroid

- First and foremost: since we are not part of the United States (and not even located in North America), then, if my memory serves me, Apple products in our countries come from the European branch of Apple, which puts quite different prices (quite possibly they are set in euros, this is a common practice) than in the US, so it’s better to compare our prices with European ones;

- Unlike the USA with their sales tax (varies from state to state, from zero to an average of 8%), we enjoy our local VAT (18% and 20% in Russia and Ukraine, respectively);

- Shipping, duties, customs fees, costs for customs clearance, certification, and many additional “unofficial administrative costs”, i.e. simply bribes without which the cargo can sometimes be tried to get for a year or more;

- The local distributor’s earnings are not as big as it seems, although not minimal, simply because of the local business environment: 1) since even compliance with the laws does not guarantee the safety of a private business, its owners are trying to recoup the investment faster by increasing the margin; 2) the absence of cheap long-term money (i.e., simply long-term loans at a small percentage) in the local financial market forces owners to rely very heavily on their own capital for business development, i.e. Tritely you need to earn more money so that later you can order more goods for what;

- Retailer's earnings, again not as big as it seems because of the local business conditions, such as inadequate cost of renting space;

- Another important factor that is worth understanding is: the markup often does not depend on the seller’s desire to earn a lot, but because of the need to earn enough to cover costs and profit, the amount of money from a certain amount of products sold is simple. the link “the more units will be sold - the less you need to earn from each unit”, which obviously does not play in favor of Apple technology, which is not distinguished by particularly high demand in the CIS countries compared to other countries. And, of course, in this equation the costs (which beat off the mark-up), usually turn out to be much more than a person can expect “from the outside,” which may include expenses for advertising, support, promotion, business expansion, etc.

Of course, thanks to the “special techniques” (just the right connections and schemes), some distributors manage to significantly reduce the prices of their products by reducing part of taxes and other taxes, but these are rather risky exceptions (everyone can remember different stories like someone confiscated another consignment of goods and in stores there was a temporary shortage of certain goods).

All of the above is not an excuse for such a price mismatch, just an attempt to show that the local conditions of our countries are more to blame for the big price, and not the specific “greedy sellers” because for a considerable part of the points (bribes, rent, taxes, fees, duties, lack of credit money for companies) it would be possible to correct everything if in our countries the will of the authorities was (aha, it was not there). On the other hand, my personal opinion is that it’s not at all surprising to see such differences in the prices of Apple computers - although this is extremely unpleasant, but it is common to a huge part of products and goods, what can we say about cars that sometimes do cost 2-3 times more expensive than in the US, and it is not from 3 thousand dollars, but much more substantial amounts :)