so where do you buy DVDs from, if not from Amazon?

[srw]

The local record shop . I believe it has an ebay presence.

 

[HovR]

CEX (webuy.com) is always good with reasonable prices on second hand DVD's/CD's/games.

 

[slowmotion]

play.com

Once you have set up your account, its just a matter of entering your user name and password and clicking on the music/films that you like. None of that tedious stuff with credit card details every time you buy. Totally hassle-free. And cheap.

 

[ASC1951]

that's it really.......

I feel your pain.

This is a mess of HMG's own making. Starbucks move profits by trans-border charges which have no separate commercial justification, so anyone who is that way inclined could say that it's an abuse of the system. Amazon is different - it sites itself in the Channel Islands (and it has to be somewhere) precisely because its sales are then VAT-exempt. That isn't an abuse of the system, it is the intended use of a mechanism which HMG deliberately set up. Most western countries have their own tax haven, so HMG can hardly bleat about the behaviour of Amazon when it has itself created the bumpy playing field.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

It's just a bit of tax, imagine you're Italian and then it doesn't matter any more.

 

[HLaB]

I've used http://www.wowhd.co.uk/ in the past when it was called cd-wow

 

[Maz]

Bought Woman in Black (the hard-to-get version) I think they must have recorded it using a mobile phone.

Woman in Black...was that the sillouhette of the lady blocking the camera view?

 

[dellzeqq]

thanks, Ian and Slo'mo. Play.com it is!

 

[User482]

I feel your pain.

This is a mess of HMG's own making. Starbucks move profits by trans-border charges which have no separate commercial justification, so anyone who is that way inclined could say that it's an abuse of the system. Amazon is different - it sites itself in the Channel Islands (and it has to be somewhere) precisely because its sales are then VAT-exempt. That isn't an abuse of the system, it is the intended use of a mechanism which HMG deliberately set up. Most western countries have their own tax haven, so HMG can hardly bleat about the behaviour of Amazon when it has itself created the bumpy playing field.

That's not correct - Amazon are based in Luxembourg because it allows them to avoid corporation tax, even though they store and distribute within the UK. They are able to do this because retail warehousing/ order fulfillment has an HMRC tax exemption. The question is if this exemption could be revoked without harming businesses that use it legitimately.

I'm also not sure how much involvement HMG had in setting up the arrangements in the Channel Islands, bearing in mind that they're not part of the UK.

 

[theclaud]

thanks, Ian and Slo'mo. Play.com it is!

There's a good second-hand DVD shop in Swansea, but if I want something particular in a hurry I use this and pick the cheapest/quickest in-stock non-Amazonian option http://www.find-dvd.co.uk/.

 

[dellzeqq]

damn! Play.com is an overseas company, and the DVD won't arrive until the 27th!

http://www.criterion.com/ are pretty good. But.......they're based in the USA

http://www.artificial-eye.com/catalog.php?dvd are here, and have most of the films I'm ever likely to want to buy.

 

[EltonFrog]

Just by buy from Amazon, no big deal.

 

[ASC1951]

That's not correct - Amazon are based in Luxembourg because it allows them to avoid corporation tax, even though they store and distribute within the UK. They are able to do this because retail warehousing/ order fulfillment has an HMRC tax exemption. The question is if this exemption could be revoked without harming businesses that use it legitimately.

I stand corrected. Amazon certainly 'imported' their online music from the Channel Islands, though, until that Vat exemption was removed earlier this year.

I'm also not sure how much involvement HMG had in setting up the arrangements in the Channel Islands, bearing in mind that they're not part of the UK.

100% involved, I would say. My point was that by entering the treaties that it has over the last 300 years with the 'independent states' of the Channel Islands, HMG has deliberately retained those islands - and the Isle of Man - as tax havens. There might have been some flim-flam about the sovereignty of the Tynwald and the House of Keys, but the reality is that they have their
arms-length relationship because that is what it has suited HMG to create. IIRC the French and Germans both have historic tax havens and even the good old US of A, lacking former dependencies, has very different rules in Delaware and Nevada.

 

[ceepeebee]

Fopp are cracking for certain DVDs, they've got a shedload of great BFI ones in at the moment, public information ones that kind of thing. Also all yr usual films, and a whole bunch of more arty ones.

 

[Jefferson Meriwether]

I normally use Ebay to buy DVD's; not that I really buy that many.