What happened to competition ?

[Graham Walters]

Many moons ago we were promised a more competitive market, and for some products that seems true, but with rumours or Hornby all but price fixing, and limiting discounts, I am beginning to wonder if such thing as competition exists in the model railway world.

Take an N scale loco, GWR livery with DCC onboard, I bought one recently from Hattons, a Hall class, £119, now searching for coaches  and more loco's I've looked at other suppliers, and there is very little choice when it comes to price, what at first may seem a better deal, is soon outweighed by postage costs, and as a postman I know that some of the charges are, shall we say, ... inflated.

So what happened to the truly competitive market we were all promised, is it the retailers not passing on the discounts to us, or are manufacturers squeezing margins so much to all retailers, that there just can't be a market, and are they telling retailers they have to sell at RPP, which I thought was ... well ... illegal ?

[Ian Morton]

In simple terms the margin that retailers have to play with in the model railway world is much less than in some other fields.

There are no really powerful retailers who can effectively blackmail better terms out of the suppliers so the variation in price to the customer is, for an individual item, normally fairly small. (There are always exceptions for various reasons such as needing to clear old stock.)

It only starts to make a noticeable difference when you buy a number of items when the small differences start to add up.

Postage is another can of worms. A large retailer will get a better deal from Royal Mail or courier firm than a small one. Sometimes I can actually reduce my overall cost for the day's post by putting an extra, empty, packet in the post!