Axminster price increases

[Wallaceandsons]

I paid £850 for the Axminster Craft AC250PT about 2 years ago. Pretty stunned to see it at £1300 today. Also got the Harvey Table saw shortly after it was released 18 months ago. Thats gone up by a grand.

Was thinking about selling the Planer, could I get more than I spent on it?

 

[Valhalla]

It’s nothing to do with Brexit or shipping containers Axminster have always hiked their prices on a regular basis, just do a search of this site & you’ll find threads going back over a decade moaning about their price increases.
As for other companies there are plenty out there offering better value, I can’t remember the last time I shopped at Axminster.

I can give you a concrete example: I bought one of those planer jig blade alignment tools a fair while ago for £18 - Axminster now sell it for £75.....the robbing b&^tar£!.

I can guarantee you that they were not then and are not now - precision instruments................I still have the original sales invoice to prove it - the product number is even the same!!

 

[Valhalla]

I can give you another concrete example: My sister-in-law just arrived from the States with a No4 LN Smoothing plane (in Bronze .... I think I want to touch myself.....<g>). It cost me £283 U.S tax paid. Axminster are selling them for £398!!!! We, in this country, are getting royally stiffed and it's about time it stopped....

 

[Cabinetman]

I seem to remember a thread on here 18 months ago saying what rotten service they gave. Well obviously they listened, but it costs money to accept all those dodgy machines back and then sort it out with the manufacturers.

 

[Craig22]

I paid £850 for the Axminster Craft AC250PT about 2 years ago. Pretty stunned to see it at £1300 today. Also got the Harvey Table saw shortly after it was released 18 months ago. Thats gone up by a grand.

Was thinking about selling the Planer, could I get more than I spent on it?

I bought the previous version of this PT. Physically identical other than the colour. I bought it when they were doing an offer - about £800 including a dust extractor like this Axminster Craft AC153E Dust Extractor .

 

[Craig22]

As I saw it Axminster had to make a guess as to what inflation there would be over the 12 months following their catalogue printing. It's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

Nah. This is financial naivety. When I was at Oxford Instruments the FD used to buy forward sterling to future proof our prices. It is a trick used by financial institutions all the time - it is the reason your pension fund (if you have one) beats bank rates by a healthy margin.

 

[mr rusty]

DIYDad has the best answer. Shipping costs from far east have skyrocketed, plus additional import paperwork etc. Think what the kit would cost if manufactured in the UK. Take a band saw at £1200. 20% is VAT so the base selling cost is £1000. The retailer wants 25% margin so his buying cost is £750. The importer wants 20% margin so his buying cost is £600. The shipper wants £100/unit to ship it from China making the chinese selling cost £500. Of course they need a margin too. Say 40%, (as a manufacturer you need at least 40% margin) so the cost to build is £300 - how much machine can you build for £300?

No idea if the margins are actually correct but I expect not too far adrift, but it demonstrates how say just an additional £50 at the manufacturing end multiplies to £200 at the selling end if everybody keeps the same margin - and if everyone's costs have also gone up, price rises ramp up very quickly.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Axminster expensive? Surely not?

https://www.axminstertools.com/axmi...m3+Trade+Edge+Clamps20210910Manual+-+Targeted

 

[stuart little]

Axminster expensive? Surely not?

https://www.axminstertools.com/axmi...m3+Trade+Edge+Clamps20210910Manual+-+Targeted

FOR ONE clamp?
I wanted two genuine Dremel 3-jaw chucks (I'd had enough of the 'wobbly' £4 china ones), & surprisingly Ax. were the best price. I guess it's 'swings & [magic] roundabouts. (said Zebbedee)

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I looked, expecting it to be for ten.

 

[TheTiddles]

Axminster’s un-competitive prices are why they used to be a chain of large units across the UK and now they’re just one small shop in Axminster high street, no wait…

 

[stuart little]

I looked, expecting it to be for ten.

Me too! Looks to me as if £5 would cover materials.

 

[ScottandSargeant]

Container prices have increased by 5-6 times in the last year from the far east. Road freight from Europe has increased by 50+%… This has an impact on everyone. If they havent had to increase their prices, maybe they were overcharging you before??

 

[Craig22]

Those are good points.

 

[John15]

I bought a 16oz bottle of Titebond Extend last week from Axminster. It was about £9.50 plus carriage so only a bit dearer than a few years ago.

John

 

[Daniel2]

You shameless capitalist, what would Comrade Lenin Jacob think of you!

FTFY

 

[rafezetter]

I seem to remember a thread on here 18 months ago saying what rotten service they gave. Well obviously they listened, but it costs money to accept all those dodgy machines back and then sort it out with the manufacturers.

Then they should buy better quality machines and quality check them BEFORE SALE! Not our problem. If they want to sell direct from the manufacturer and bypass this step to save them money, then they have to accept the consequences, when people aren't happy to spend good money (and sometimes more than other retailers) on defective tripe.

 

[D_W]

I can give you another concrete example: My sister-in-law just arrived from the States with a No4 LN Smoothing plane (in Bronze .... I think I want to touch myself.....<g>). It cost me £283 U.S tax paid. Axminster are selling them for £398!!!! We, in this country, are getting royally stiffed and it's about time it stopped....

That's always been the case with LN planes. You have to get them from the US (at a price that LN wants), get them through distribution (who is almost always going to add 30-50%) and then pay VAT. I sold a #62 to someone in france this year, not intentionally, but on ebay for $360. I was shocked. I started it at a penny and got a whole heap of insults from americans about how I was shill bidding and that the listing would never sell and I'd be stuck with it. In the end, I started to worry that it as a scammer playing a hoax, but it sold, whoever got it paid some enormous amount to ship it and they paid right away.

And then when they'd had the chance to play with it a little (I had cleaned up some incomplete flattening that was within LN spec, but made it really point and shoot - the guy was ecstatic and said that he was super pleased with it. There were first, none in stock there, and second, I'm guessing it would've cost him $360 for the plane in france, anyway (it was $245 or something at the time and I think it's now $265 in the US).

Don't worry, we get hammered on some things from europe. A Sebo vacuum is far more here without VAT than it is there with VAT and they're not even made in the UK!

The sebo automatic can be $880 here before sales tax, and then if you look around at commercial vacuum sellers selling the same vacuum under different brands, it's about $450-$550. "it's german" is something that's often said here before "bend over". "german engineering!". It's a nice vac. I have two that were sold under the prochem brand and the average for the two of them with shipping was $450. Parts and owner's manual and spec sheet says SEBO on it.

Tons of stuff like that from europe with distribution agreements. Anything that Woodcraft gets exclusive rights to here, forget about it. It'll be more without vat by a large amount than it is there with vat.

 

[D_W]

I paid £850 for the Axminster Craft AC250PT about 2 years ago. Pretty stunned to see it at £1300 today. Also got the Harvey Table saw shortly after it was released 18 months ago. Thats gone up by a grand.

Was thinking about selling the Planer, could I get more than I spent on it?

Guessing that's somewhat close to the proportional increase in cost from china (assuming that's where it's from). China is starting to get the idea that they can charge more (and their workers are demanding more in wages. Average wage there is about 4 times what it was 10 years ago - perhaps not all of that is filtering down to workers in a power tool factory, but I'd be surprised if their wages haven't doubled).

 

[TheTiddles]

FTFY

Incapable of listening to others, ignores any fact that didn’t support his own argument and rejected anything new on principle…. I really don’t see where you are drawing any parallels?