Why is everything so expensive in London?

I just went to London. I knew it was expensive but this was out of control. How do you guys afford anything? I gave a money exchange person 120 dollars and ended up with 51 pounds. My 100 Euros got me something like 60 pounds. The exchange rate was crappy and they took out some extra but still.

Then I tried to go shopping. I found a dress I liked at Urban Outfitters and it was listed at 40 pounds. That put it at 80 dollars or something, which is a decent dress, but it was just a flimsy little thing. I looked up how much the dress was on the Urban Outfitters website and it was $34.00.

How can the same store sell something that is worth $34.00 for 40 pounds in England? According to me that dress should be like 18 pounds or something.

Don't you guys feel ripped off all the time? Do you get paid lots of money? How do you afford ANYTHING? Our hotel was something you could find in San Francisco for maybe 90 dollars a night, and it was 185 pounds a night. It was just some really basic hotel. For 350 dollars a night for a hotel I would get something with an in room sauna and free champagne anywhere else in the world.

So explain. Why do you guys have to pay so, so, so much more for everything and why do you agree to this?

The dole.

You see we all live in castles.

Oh how we long for a bungalow.

Thats why I left. Should have stayed, dublin is getting more expensive.

There's whole websites dedicated to "rip-off Britain".

I believe one social group has realised that if they leave school at 14 and start producing a baby every year by the time they are 20 they won't have to work and will be getting more money from the government than someone who stayed at school and got a job.

Seriously tho, it gets a bit cheaper up north but we still, willingly, pay more for things than some other countries. One excuse given by companies is that ground rent costs more over here + the cost of importing goods from other countries...

[Edited on May 28, 2006 by gothi]

You can't necessarily just compare stuff like that.
Whilst London is horrendously expensive, the average pay is a bit more - I use the Can of Coke theory for this.
How much does a can of coke cost in the US? IIRC, it's something like 50-60c, depending on where you go. This is reasonable only to the amount people are paid in the US. In the UK, we pay 50p for a can of Coke - it's roughly the same proportionally for us, though it's actually US$1.20. Similarly, in Malaysia, a can of coke costs around RM0.80 - which is more like US$0.20 (or possibly less, my mind doesn't function correctly tonight). Yeah, it's cheaper there compared to the US, but proportionally it's the same.

Of course, our government does add 17.5% to everything, which isn't nice, and London is horrendously expensive (all cities are; New York is a helluva lot more expensive, I've found, than Lincoln, Nebraska).

[Edited on May 29, 2006 by cmdrfire]

Also, the pound is pretty strong right now so you don't get much for your Euro or Dollar.

Well, yeah, I guess it's "strong". You guys should all go crazy shopping in Florida or buying property or something then, instead of wasting all that money.

It still just doesn't make that much sense to me. I've lived in big, expenisive cities and know how much things cost. I'm not going to spend twice as much on the same things for no good reason. I swear, I would just buy everything off the internet if I lived there.

According to the site I linked to:

source

Yes, yes we do.

That's the thing. People make decent salaries in America--it's not a third world country. Rent in London seems to be what it is in any big city, like San Francisco. Where is the difference? What justifies the exact same clothing store selling a dress for 35 dollars online and 40 POUNDS in the store. That's a huge difference. The dress wasn't worth 40 pounds or 75 dollars. It was just not worth it in any way, it was kind of crappy and geared towards teenagers and twenty year olds. Urban Outfitters is not an expensive clothing company, their clothes should not be that expensive anywhere.

For the most part I felt ripped off looking at prices and just wondered if people felt like that all the time. I would be pissed off to know people in VERY similar western countries, France, America, Germany, wherever, make similar salaries and get to buy the same things for way less.

Yeah Charley is right, we all have huge personal debts.
Except me because I recently paid it off after 10 years working like a nut and being stupidly frugal, wasting my teen years away!!!! Wahoo!!!
If I play my cards right, I may have a flat and car by the time I start taking out my pension!
This is also why a lot of us Londoners in our 20s still live at home- to avoid more debt!
I think Japan is probably the only place where it is possibly worse.

But when it comes to exchange rates, as allyn said its simply that the pound is very strong at the moment in comparison to the dollar and the Euro, which it hasn't been for a while (I'd blame Bush if I was you)

A lot of us would love to, but green cards aren't that easy to come by.
I was recently in Thailand and realised I could buy a place there with a loan from a UK bank and actually save money in the long term by not having to pay UK prices for basic necissitites.
Tho of course I don't qualify to buy a house there, or Australia, which i also tried.

I'm sure the rich in the UK are filthy rich.
Unfortuntaley I imagine none of us here are one of them!


[Edited on May 29, 2006 by Nokturn]

do you have a flag?

The metric system *rattles fist*

out of curiosity, what is the average rent for a flat in London (decent neighborhood) ? say 30 x 30 square feet , average size of a studio in New York City ...
I was thinking of looking to work for a British company so I can live there for a while and see London without going broke ...

Do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

You're right! I'm not going to agree to it any more. From now on, I'm gonna walk around naked, grow all my own food, maybe move to a forest. Seriously though, you are right, everything is stupidly expensive here, I'm barely coping :/

Right. Because going shopping in Florida is so much better than wasting your money living in London.

London is damn expensive to live in. As is New York city.

And your example of the dress may not be the best.

1) Things are cheaper online
2) Urban outfitters is a US company. UK goods are cheaper there than here. Everytime I'm in london, I bring back Typhoo tea and stuff from the body shop. why? It's cheaper.
3) retail pricing is often based on where the items are being sold. I find stuff cheaper in stores here in austin than in the same exact store in New York

I would say London is more like Europe than the rest of the UK, due to the large diversity of people.

If you go to any provincial town such as Banbury (where I live) and you'll find very little connection to Europe due to the lack of diversity amonst the population (apart from the absurdly high Polish population).

As for prices I wouldn't say we're that ripped off as I was in South Africa last year and the prices in shops over there were almost identical to those in the UK and the national average wage is a hell of a lot less over there than it is here.

poles are the in thing up near here too.

dunno what thats about, but they seem to get beaten up by meatheads a lot

"Don't you guys feel ripped off all the time"----hell yes
"Do you get paid lots of money"---------------hell no
"How do you afford ANYTHING?"-----------they give out credit like it was no tomorrow

and the people are so money hungry its unbelieveble

when i first got to the uk in '03 it was 70p for a single bus ride
and now its £1,50
and the service is just as shitty if not worse


[Edited on May 29, 2006 by saffa]

a one bedroon flat is probably going to cost you +-£6oo per month without bills
in a crap area


so depends on what you do its going to cost you more than half your months wages
cause the average wage is about £1200 a month depends on what you do