"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
"nightjar

I deal with a major recycling company, although not in batteries, and I
am
assured that they are.

Colin Bignell



Recycling is not equal to remanufacturing.

Recycling companies sell whatever they can to be remanufactured, as it makes
it easier for them to achieve the targets set under the EU waste directives.

Colin Bignell

John wrote:

Brilliant!!! I have just sent that link to my boss who drives one of these
f*****g things and NEVER takes it anywhere near the mud. We once went to
one of these 'off roader' experiences as an office day out and you could use
your own vehicle if you wanted to or use one of theirs for a higher
admission fee. He wouldn't even take it onto the property due to the drive
being VERY muddy and chose to leave it in the pub car park nearby as he
"had only just washed it yesterday and didn't want it to get dirty! A quick
"we're off to the toilet and for a fag" at the lunchtime break and an
obliging landlord with buckets soon sorted that out for him though! His
face was worth a thousand words, I think he nearly said them all.

Nice one! Personally, I despise all 4x4s whether they're sometimes used
off-road or not, but we won't go into that discussion

P.S. I am now going to find the company web site.

If you're looking to buy some, search on eBay for "spray on mud"

On 24 Apr 2006, wrote:


His total markup is in the thousands of percent.

Has anyone seen a bigger markup than that?


The next worst markup I have seen must have been for mobile phone cases
and PHFs.

These cost mext to nothing to make and supply - even back in the early
days of mobiles when volume demand was lower.

But these items were seen as some sort of super premium thing and they
were charged to the public at suitably super premium prices!

All the dealers back then were in cahoots with one another on this one.
They resolutely stuck to the same sort of ripp-off price as one another.
Or maybe it was the wholesalers who was ripping the actual dealers off?
Well, the end effect was for the poor punter to pay a lot and get a
rather little.

On 24 Apr 2006, "nightjar" nightjar@insert my surname here.uk.com
wrote:

"Andy" wrote in message
...
I was in my local newsagent in London and saw he had a card of
button
cells behind the till which he was selling at œ2.99 each.

I recognised the card of cells as one which I can get from my
local pound shop for œ1. It contains about 16 cells.

Considering that the pound shop makes a profit then it will
already have raised the price from something like 50p.

If it was, indeed the same product, it will have been bought from
somewhere that specialises in bankrupt and surplus stock sales, so
the selling price is no indication of the original trade sale
price. However, pound shops also sell remanufactured button cells,
often in packs that look a lot like manufacturers' original packs,
which do not have the life of new cells.

Colin Bignell

I didn't get the feeling they were bankrupt stock. A card of very
cheap button cells has been available for a long time both in the UK
and in the US. The reason they are not popular is probably because
people feel it isn't worth putting one in because the cells will last
a very short time or perhaps the cells will leak. I guess there
might be a bit of truth in both those worries.

On 24 Apr 2006, wrote:

I can't say exactly what the mark up is here for the newsagent
as he may get left with oddment batteries that he can't sell
but he makes a markup of about £2.50 on 50p (500%) if he sold
just one battery!

His total markup is in the thousands of percent.

Thousands of percent is a bit over-reactive; it's a few quid. You
can't really expect someone to make a living charging just a few
pence extra.

The only real bad thing about it is that the batteries on these
kinds of packs are normally all rubbish anyway...

Do your sums again. I think you may have slipped a decimal place or
two!

It is a 500% markup if he sells only one cell out of the 16 (or maybe
20) as I originally explained.

If he goes on to sell only half his cells at £2.99 each then he gets
approx £24. The 8 cells cost £0.50.

So at the halfway point he has a markup well over 4,000%. Cor!

On 25 Apr 2006, The3rd Earl Of wrote:

Andy wrote:
I was in my local newsagent in London and saw he had a card of
button cells behind the till which he was selling at œ2.99 each.

I recognised the card of cells as one which I can get from my
local pound shop for œ1. It contains about 16 cells.

Considering that the pound shop makes a profit then it will
already have raised the price from something like 50p.

I can't say exactly what the mark up is here for the newsagent as
he may get left with oddment batteries that he can't sell but he
makes a markup of about œ2.50 on 50p (500%) if he sold just one
battery!

His total markup is in the thousands of percent.

Has anyone seen a bigger markup than that?

I think you'll find his profits come from kids sweets ie something
that sells for 2p and he sells for 3p so say you have 250 MoJo's in
a box thats 5GBP and 2.50GBP profit
add that to all the other sweets and total it up at the end of the
weeks
that some profit.

I know this because I used to own 2 mobile shops. :-)

Off topic: When did Opal Fruits become called Star-somethings?

On 24 Apr 2006, wrote:

"Christian McArdle" wrote in
message ...
But pubs do make a much larger margin on soft drinks than
they do on alcoholic drinks.

I think it is justifiable, though. You can't drink many pints of
Coke in the
same way you can with beer. I bet that statistically, a soft
drinker will spend a lot longer in the pub for one drink that the
average beer drinker.

Rubbish.
I can drink pint for pint Pepsi Max with a beer drinker.
And I don't get drunk and smash the place up either.

Therefore, soft drinks need to have a larger mark up to get a
fairer share of the fixed costs.

Its just profitering, nothing to do with increased costs.


A few years ago there was a multi-filter system on the market for
restaurants which filtered ordinary tap water so the restuarant could
then sell it as premium water.

I think the law was fussy about the exact terms used to describe such
water but the law still allowed it to be called some very misleading
nonsense.

The cost of tap water is next to nothing (even allowing for all sorts of
overheads) but the cost to the diner is, I would guess, be something
like a couple of quid.

Anton Gijsen typ ed


John wrote:
"Anton Gijsen" wrote in
message ...
I was thinking the other day about the markup they must make on that
"spray-on mud" stuff they sell to ****head 4x4 drivers.

This is a wind up surely?

Oh, I forgot to add, IIRC it costs about £5-6 a can.

Where there's muck, there's brass...

--
Helen D. Vecht:
Edgware.

In message , Helen Deborah
Vecht writes
Guy King typed


The message
from Paul G contains these words:

You can recycle batteries at Ikea - don't drive there though to
specifically just to recycle the batteries as I suspect that will
outweigh any advantages. Given that there are very limited places to
recycle batteries it does make a mockery of warnings on batteries not to
depose of them in a bin and on local council literature saying the same
thing (where they do not provide any readily accessible facilities).

IIRC some councils do provide for battery recycling from their doorstep
collections.

Brent, my London Borough, does.

Ah. I should have specified my borough, as it's definitely a guilty to
the above. Glad to hear that other boroughs do have their act together.

--
Paul G
Typing from Barking

Andy wrote:

The next worst markup I have seen must have been for mobile phone cases
and PHFs.

These cost mext to nothing to make and supply - even back in the early
days of mobiles when volume demand was lower.

But these items were seen as some sort of super premium thing and they
were charged to the public at suitably super premium prices!

All the dealers back then were in cahoots with one another on this one.
They resolutely stuck to the same sort of ripp-off price as one another.
Or maybe it was the wholesalers who was ripping the actual dealers off?
Well, the end effect was for the poor punter to pay a lot and get a
rather little.

And those in the know, or who could be bothered to shop around, went to
their local market stall and got them at a half-reasonable price.

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:23:30 +0100, John Cartmell
wrote:

In article ,
Andy wrote:
His total markup is in the thousands of percent.

Unless you know that he purchased the item from the same source as the pound
shop you cannot make that assumption. Pound shops generally do not provide the
continuity of products that is essential for trade. Comparing any other
business with them is unacceptable unless you also accept the possibility of
your retailers saying to you that the cells you require for essential
equipment can no longer be supplied - and you should have bought them last
week when they were dirt cheap.

The cheap batteries may be of poorer quality. I've bought batteries
from discount stores on occasions and have found a much higher rate of
dead ones.

I think they buy up stock with a short lifespan at a knock down price
too. If you buy a battery from a 'good' store it will have a "use-by"
date several years in the future. Batteries from discount stores
often have a date only a few months in the future.

Mark

On 24 Apr 2006, Mary wrote:

"Madge O'Reene" wrote in message
ups.com...
Mary Fisher:
I saw the same sort of thing in a shop in Lincoln some time ago.
Unbelievable!

Mary

Why is it unbelievable?

What do you do for a living? Are the the LOWEST PAID person doing
your job? In your company? In your town? In your country? In the
world? Unbelievable!

You're making assumptions.

Here's a simple idea - if you think a shop is charging too much,
don't buy from them.

I didn't. I SAW it.


You seem to be suggesting that there is never suc a thing as over
priced, or gouging, or unwarranted markup.

A typical retail markup is in the order of 50%. Some items more and
some items less. Even if we allow 100 to 300% markup for fancy items
(ie those which are time limited by fashionable trends) then markups
of thousands of percent are amazing and, dare I say it, almost
"unebelievable".

A true market would reduce such a profit differential but clearly
there is either a lack of consumer knowledge if they're prepared to
pay such ridiculuous prices or very limited consumer choice of
outlets and prices.

Yup, the poster is right. It's unbelievable. Such venality.

In article ,
Joe Smith wrote:
A typical retail markup is in the order of 50%.

I once approached our local 'stately home & garden' and offered to design and
make a board game (hand made) specifically for them to be sold in their shop.
They wanted a markup of 140%. That was their 'standard'.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing

On 26 Apr 2006, wrote:

On Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:23:30 +0100, John Cartmell
wrote:

In article ,
Andy wrote:
His total markup is in the thousands of percent.

Unless you know that he purchased the item from the same source as
the pound shop you cannot make that assumption. Pound shops
generally do not provide the continuity of products that is
essential for trade. Comparing any other business with them is
unacceptable unless you also accept the possibility of your
retailers saying to you that the cells you require for essential
equipment can no longer be supplied - and you should have bought
them last week when they were dirt cheap.

The cheap batteries may be of poorer quality. I've bought
batteries from discount stores on occasions and have found a much
higher rate of dead ones.

I think they buy up stock with a short lifespan at a knock down
price too. If you buy a battery from a 'good' store it will have a
"use-by" date several years in the future. Batteries from discount
stores often have a date only a few months in the future.


What you say has a lot of logic to it but I have found that some of
the better cells on the £1 card to be quite good (some are crapped
out). I don't see much evidence of any "use by" date on these £1
cards although there may be something purely fictional stamped
somewhere.

They are usually alkaline button cells and not silver oxide so they
do not always power some types of equipment.

Silver oxide has a slightly higher nominal voltage and will keep its
voltage right to the very end, whereas the voltage of alkaline cells
decreases in a much more gradual way as the cell gets used up and
this may not suit some devices. The theoretical shelf life of both
types is usually very good and in the order of a year or two.

I run my digital thermometers off these cheapo cells. And also run
those poorly designed devices which need four buttons cells all
stacked together (eg my voice recording pen). If I didn't put cheapo
batteries in that sort of device then I would very quickly spend more
on full price batteries than the device is worth!

I have even put cheapo cell sinto a watch where the effort of opening
and replacing and closing the watch make it annoying if the cells
packs up in 3 months. But I have been pleasantly surprised - altho
my expectation was not set very high to start with! :-)

"Joe Smith" wrote in message
...
On 24 Apr 2006, Mary wrote:

"Madge O'Reene" wrote in message
ups.com...
Mary Fisher:
I saw the same sort of thing in a shop in Lincoln some time ago.
Unbelievable!

Mary

Why is it unbelievable?

What do you do for a living? Are the the LOWEST PAID person doing
your job? In your company? In your town? In your country? In the
world? Unbelievable!

You're making assumptions.

Here's a simple idea - if you think a shop is charging too much,
don't buy from them.

I didn't. I SAW it.


You seem to be suggesting that there is never suc a thing as over
priced, or gouging, or unwarranted markup.

A typical retail markup is in the order of 50%. Some items more and
some items less. Even if we allow 100 to 300% markup for fancy items
(ie those which are time limited by fashionable trends) then markups
of thousands of percent are amazing and, dare I say it, almost
"unebelievable".

A true market would reduce such a profit differential but clearly
there is either a lack of consumer knowledge if they're prepared to
pay such ridiculuous prices or very limited consumer choice of
outlets and prices.

Yup, the poster is right. It's unbelievable. Such venality.

Yes.

"Helen Deborah Vecht" wrote in message
...


IIRC some councils do provide for battery recycling from their doorstep
collections.

Brent, my London Borough, does.

My local recycling centre in Leeds has such a disposal facility. It's not on
the doorstep but it's possible to save such oddities until there are enough
to make a journey.

It's no problem.

It's also convenient that the scrapyard is next door to the recycling centre
so if you can be bothered (we can) to separate different metals you can come
away with cash in hand.

We're dealing with the third generation of scrap merchants!

Mary

"Helen Deborah Vecht" wrote in message
...
Anton Gijsen typ ed


John wrote:
"Anton Gijsen" wrote in
message ...
I was thinking the other day about the markup they must make on that
"spray-on mud" stuff they sell to ****head 4x4 drivers.

This is a wind up surely?

Oh, I forgot to add, IIRC it costs about £5-6 a can.

Where there's muck, there's brass...

Ah - a southern expression :-)

In Yorkshire we say, "Where there's muck there's money." It's alliterative.

Mary

On 25 Apr 2006, wrote:

"Madge O'Reene" wrote in message
ups.com...
Soft drinks in pubs and night clubs - they buy the stuff in bulk as
concentrate and mix it with carbonated water on site. A œ2.50 glass is
250ml and typically costs around 5p. Just as with the shop, you're
paying for the convenience.

...paying for the convenience - whether or not you use it.


I think one should also make some allowance for the fact that one is
paying for the premises: - tables, chairs, lighting, cleaning (er,
well), nice friendly staff (huh?) and all that sort of stuff.

On 26 Apr 2006, John wrote:

In article ,
Joe Smith wrote:
A typical retail markup is in the order of 50%.

I once approached our local 'stately home & garden' and offered to
design and make a board game (hand made) specifically for them to
be sold in their shop. They wanted a markup of 140%. That was their
'standard'.


That is approx the same as what I was saying.

"A typical retail markup is in the order of 50%." I said 50% but I was
referencing that 50% to the retail price.

In your case there would be the 100% wholesale price plus 140% markup.
So the markup is 140/240 = 58% of the retail price.

In article ,
Joe Smith wrote:
On 26 Apr 2006, John wrote:

In article ,
Joe Smith wrote:
A typical retail markup is in the order of 50%.

I once approached our local 'stately home & garden' and offered to
design and make a board game (hand made) specifically for them to
be sold in their shop. They wanted a markup of 140%. That was their
'standard'.

That is approx the same as what I was saying.

"A typical retail markup is in the order of 50%." I said 50% but I was
referencing that 50% to the retail price.

In your case there would be the 100% wholesale price plus 140% markup.
So the markup is 140/240 = 58% of the retail price.

I've always looked on markup from the retailer's rather than consumer's pov.
Your way tends to reduce the impact of what I would term an extravagant retail
cut. In your terms I'd suggest 25% as a more reasonable share.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing

In article , milou
wrote:
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:40:48 +0100, John Cartmell
wrote:



I've always looked on markup from the retailer's rather than consumer's
pov. Your way tends to reduce the impact of what I would term an
extravagant retail cut. In your terms I'd suggest 25% as a more reasonable
share.

As long as you don't pay income tax, don't eat, don't pay in a pension
fund, don't pay your staff, don't pay rates and steal the car you drive,
25% is about OK.

But I'm looking at it from the point of view of a designer and manufacturer
who has to do all that and gets only 10% (if that) after buying raw materials!
;-(

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing

In article ,
John Cartmell wrote:
As long as you don't pay income tax, don't eat, don't pay in a pension
fund, don't pay your staff, don't pay rates and steal the car you
drive, 25% is about OK.

I'm old enough to remember the days of resale price maintenance, and the
standard markup then on most goods was 50% over trade price.

--
*Starfishes have no brains *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
John Cartmell wrote:
As long as you don't pay income tax, don't eat, don't pay in a pension
fund, don't pay your staff, don't pay rates and steal the car you
drive, 25% is about OK.

I'm old enough to remember the days of resale price maintenance, and the
standard markup then on most goods was 50% over trade price.

Standard markup on fresh food at that time was 25% - and in that you had to
cover your wastage. Nearly 60% on non-perishables is unacceptable.

--
John Cartmell john@ followed by finnybank.com 0845 006 8822
Qercus magazine FAX +44 (0)8700-519-527 www.finnybank.com
Qercus - the best guide to RISC OS computing

In article ,
John Cartmell wrote:
I'm old enough to remember the days of resale price maintenance, and
the standard markup then on most goods was 50% over trade price.

Standard markup on fresh food at that time was 25% - and in that you had
to cover your wastage. Nearly 60% on non-perishables is unacceptable.

I thought goods excepted foodstuffs? Nor would you expect much wastage of
food at the retail end in those days - most outlets ran out of stock first.

--
*Why are they called apartments, when they're all stuck together? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

The message
from Joe Smith contains these words:

That is approx the same as what I was saying.

"A typical retail markup is in the order of 50%." I said 50% but I was
referencing that 50% to the retail price.

In your case there would be the 100% wholesale price plus 140% markup.
So the markup is 140/240 = 58% of the retail price.

Mark-up is, as the name implies, added to the cost price. What you
mistakenly call mark-up is normally referred to as (gross) profit
margin.

--
Roger Chapman