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Comment by moffkalast | Hacker News Reader

The pricing is on another level as well.

Believe it or not, but theirs are the lowest prices in Switzerland.

I like galaxus too but they’re not the cheapest. Most of their stock can be had cheaper from other online Swiss retailers.

Toppreise and google shopping (yeah…) often can find better deals on the same items even after shipping.

That may be true. But overall their prices are pretty reasonable.

Personally, I prefer paying a few francs more and in return get the certainty that I get what I ordered reasonably fast.

I never had a problem with deliveries from them, alas, high ticket items I picked up personally.

The only one time where they couldn't deliver a couple of USB chargers for a couple weeks because it was out of stock and the supplier couldn't supply I cancelled the pending order and had the money credited to my credit card.

Not having to deal with some dodgy outfit is worth the slight surcharge to me.

Same here. Its nice to pay a bit less but it usually comes with a headache when problems arise.

I wouldn’t pay 20% more but 5 or even 10% is reasonable.

Oh I believe it. But that's kind of like being the poorest billionaire, you're still a billionaire.

With the EEA being what it is, I'm really surprised they can keep afloat since ordering from literally anywhere else ought to be cheaper just by labour costs involved alone. These days even Amazon.de doesn't get many of my orders anymore since they're reselling the exact same crap Aliexpress has for a quarter of the price.

I’m not sure what point you’re making. How is that issue related to labor in Europe? Amazon US is all white-label Aliexpress stuff too, but the minimum wage here is literally $7.25 an hour, many states have zero sales tax, and there’s no VAT.

Even if you're selling the same item you need to pay local rates for importing, handling, stock storage, etc. which are highly dependant on labour prices and real estate costs.

As such if you're trying to sell to anyone who's not in the same purchasing power range or higher (aka literally nobody when it comes to Switzerland) you'll run into problems as you can't compete with vendors operating at lower costs in those countries. It's just basic arithmetic.

That's what makes Switzerland one of the worst places one could manufacture and/or stock things and China one of the best. Exploitation of the poor is the optimal business choice, after all it's the very foundation upon which capitalism itself is built.

I guess you never heard about Swiss import tax, and overall you don't seem very familiar with topic. They have no competition here, they offer maybe 50x more products than available in rest of eshops, and most have actually in warehouse. Stuff you simply can't buy elsewhere and its either not shipped into CH at all (thank you, Amazon) or at higher prices and utterly crappy warranty.

They are also expanding in EEA: Germany, France, Italy for sure. I don't know about other markets.

In Germany, they are usually close to the cheapest, but rarely the cheapest when I see them on Geizhals (price comparison site).

Stop a minute and think about the potential causes, it might be good for your wallet but bad for everything else

Electronics are actually cheaper in Switzerland than in most countries, thanks to low VAT.

Not quite true, once you vos der VAT on these is 7% in CH but 20+% in the EU. Things should therefore be at least 13% cheaper in CH but they aren’t because reasons.

Most of electronics truly are, if they are sold officially here, even if eshop margins are a bit higher. And its closer to 8% on non-essential items (food, books) where its below 3%.

That's how you do VAT, compared to all EU countries around who screw their population left and right because they have big public debts and getting worse, while employing armies of unemployable bureaucrats who do almost nothing and have ridiculous safety and social nets.

The world could learn a thing or two on how Swiss run things in general and especially government stuff, but the problem is this is not transferable elsewhere, people are simply... different to be polite.

But they are. At the risk of getting into specifics, all electronics I buy here are cheaper than in surrounding EU countries, the 256 GB version iPhone 14 Pro is cheaper than 128 base model in the EU, the Ultra watch is 850 at Apple store Switzerland (799 digitec), 999 at apple.de. Yes you can find rare counter examples, but I love Switzerland as a tech nerd, especially since CHF reached parity with EUR.

The best deal (although it’s a lot of hassle depending where you live) is to order things to Germany, go pick it up, get your papers stamped to get the 20% VAT back. Then pay 7% tax if worth over 300.- or no tax if less. But it takes time and isn’t always worth the hassle.

People always get that wrong. Switzerland is more expensive when human labor is involved, cheaper or same as surrounding countries when not. However that extra money also ends up with the labor, so it's a good thing for everyone.

Best example is a Brezel. A fresh Brezel is like $4, but a buttered one (done by human) $8-$9.

Not the butter is expensive. Humans just get proper money for their work.

I don't think so. It might be a bit cheaper than in other European countries, but it's probably more expensive than in the US.

Yes. Clicked around for a few things because I remembered their german branch from a few years, nothing has changed. At least not for the few parts I checked today.

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