Do the rich deserve to get ripped off because they are rich?

No one deserves to be ripped-off, except perhaps the greedy who believe ridiculous "something for nothing" scams.

What you have described is not, in my view, a rip-off any more than bottled water is a rip--off.

1) There are stupid rich people as well as stupid poor people. I don't suppose the ratio actually varies that much between the groups. In my experience most of those who have hard earned their riches are pretty bright.

2) Something is worth what somebody is prepared to pay for it. I can think of plenty of luxury goods where the 'worth' consists entirely of the brand association rather then the base raw materials. They are successful presumably because over time the purchasers are happy with the combination of product and image. I know we all like a bargain but if we are honest I suspect most of us also like to know something we have bought is (to nick a marketing phrase) 'reassuringly expensive'.

3) Wrap something mundane in carbon fibre and a whole bunch of marketing guff and certain people will always buy it. I know this because I am a cyclist.....

4) I'd say a huge amount of nonsense has always been spouted about certain brands, ages, styles and nationalities of grape juice by it's purveyors. Typically they refer to dusty glass bottles and cobwebbed cellars in stone farmhouses rather than carbon fibre modernity but the principles are not so different. Fizzy grape juice is especially sold on all sorts of additional associations beyond the actual content of the bottle. I view all grape juice as pretty equivalent myself. Sorry Rod!

Cheers Bruce

Those wealthy people who believe that they are the salt of the earth simply because they are rich, who totally ignore the rest of the world and live in their own little enclaves (Monte-Carlo?), who find it normal that anyone should earn millions of pounds a month - "ah, but we work hard, don't we, we deserve our wealth..." (my grandparents were all factory workers - they worked hard, for next to nothing) - yes, those people deserve to be ripped off... Sorry about that little socialistic rant...Just ignore it.

Surely the purchase of luxury items is a voluntary act.

Value is perceived, and if perceived as being fine then no regret will come along.

Post purchase regret usually is related to some doubt about what one has spent one's hard earned on!

I don't think anyone deserves being ripped off, but as they old saying goes,

"A fool and his money are easily parted!"

ATB from George

Let's be honest. Much of the value of luxury brands arises precisely because they are expensive, not in spite of it. The pleasure of purchase and ownership is largely derived from the showing off of one's wealth to others. This over-priced booze is no more a rip-off than any of the other over-priced booze. In fact, they should put the price up even more to make it even better value.

If there were no sour grapes, we would not be able to appreciate sweet ones as being nicer!

ATB from George

"Sour grapes", in other words envy, is a simplistic argument when applied to social injustice. I for one wouldn't say that only "rich fools" will buy Naim's Statement - although spending over a hundred thousand pounds on a piece of hifi equipment may appear over the top to some.

Dear Frenchnaim,

I am sure that you will be acquainted with the old workers' slogan painted on Paris walls in the 1930s:

Pour qui, pourquoi?

Some things never really change.

ATB from George

My friend's wife works for a luxury goods website and he asked, jokingly, if I'd be interested in a single carbon fibre coffee cup, I think by Porsche, for £750. It was easy to say no as I don't drink coffee. 

"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't."

Cockroaches and the rich.

And, probably, Ginsters pasties.

An item is offered at a price, any potential purchaser makes a decision on its value and either buys or doesn't buy. If the information is available in the public domain on what that product includes then I don't believe the purchaser has been ripped off as its a case of buyer beware.  If, of course, the item is not as described or misrepresented then that's another matter. I'd much rather rich people were ripped off than poor though

Chaps

I would not worry about what other people buy, just worry about yourself.

Also wealthy people are usually wealthy because they are intelligent and they have the ability to make up their own mind on what is value for money, they don't need any help from anyone else and neither are they interested in comments about being ripped off etc.

Regards

Mick

Don't get me started on Ginsters pasties. I know a guy who won't eat a pasty if it's not a Ginster. whereas most people are quite happy with a Greggs. Although he is a pretentious prat.

Rod.

This thread seems similar to the "Great Hugo Thread" insofar as the quality of the product is being judged by the quality of the marketing and as we know a lot of people think the hugo's an excellent product.

I've looked at the Prive Bleu website, the marketing is a bit over the top, but then again a lot of marketing is over the top. I'd say anybody taken in by it deserves to be ripped off.

The carbon fibre bottle has got me wondering if I should trade my Moet & Chandon "Petite Liquorelle" for one of these.

A bargain at £1,750.00

http://www.cuttingedgecarbon.c...ith-flutes-148-p.asp

The big difference is the Hugo is excellent VFM and not overpriced like this wine.

The point is, people judged the Hugo, negatively, based on marketing.  As far as I can tell, Rod is doing the same, having not tasted "the overpriced wine".

Although, no matter how good it is, at 500 Euro it must be overpriced.

Interesting comments, thanks all.

The above is the nub of the issue for me.

On their website they are claiming that the wine is good because it is made from "Pinot Menuir(sic)" grapes.

Of the three grape varieties cultivated in Champagne, Pinot Meunier is - by some margin - the least good (this is fact rather than just my opinion by the way). This is something that their own marketing tacitly acknowledges because their (even) more expensive cuvées are made from higher percentages of the other, better, grape varieties.

There is also a lot of nonsense - à la made up chemicals in shampoo - about how these grapes are grown and become wine.

So the parallel I would draw is if, say, Sanyo, were to release a £5000 amplifier, and attempt to sell it on the basis that its components were tin and plastic, because these are the best components for the accurate reproduction of sound. 

One could reasonably say more fool anyone who buys it. But it's the thin end of a wedge which might result in people thinking that when companies like, say, Naim, claim that they use gold and aluminium for the same reasons, they are doing so both egregiously, and perhaps for devious purposes.

People drinking this stuff (and I have to admit that I have not tried it, but since the exact same liquid is available in standard glass for a twentieth of the price, I think I am safe in the assumption), may well think that it simply is not worth spending the extra on other prestige Champagne Cuvées, because they cannot taste the difference in this one. Rather as they might reject other hi-fi because of the limited performance of their theoretical Sanyo amplifier. 

So whether they deserve to get, or even whether they are being, ripped off, is perhaps not as significant as whether the product being in the market is fair or ethical for other products with which it competes.  

Rod

have you actually tasted this wine? edit: I read above that you have not. So you do not know what it tastes like.

For what it is worth, you are in an industry that promotes wine on its "quality", which is subjectively determined, but also on its scarcity - as if scarcity has some intrinsic quality. It is not in your commercial interests that this might find favour.

As for the hi-fi analogy there are many who would say the components in a nam box are a miniscule fraction of the retail price...

The issue with making this sort of stuff from carbon fibre composite is that there is no real reason to. If something doesn't benefit by being light, stiff and strong, carbon fibre is the wrong choice. Tennis rackets, hockey sticks, F1 cars, bicycles - yep. An ice bucket, not so much.

Spot-on Char. This stuff would be worth every penny at twice the price and no risk compared to Viagra.

Rod, old bean, you are simply marketting the right stuff, but in the wrong business

I don't actually understand what you mean by that Lionel.

Scarcity that pushes prices up is the result of an imbalance between supply and demand. 

There is not $60million worth of paint on a Van Gogh Canvas, nor £10million worth of gold and gems in a Fabergé egg. But there are more customers for them than there are available.

You cannot create such scarcity, and certainly not before a brand is launched. The market creates it, and it is almost always based on quality (although that is of course in the eye or whatever of the beholder).

Scarcity has no intrinsic quality, but it is borne of an independent assessment of the quality or performance of the thing in question.

As it stands, this product has no demand, and no limit to its supply. 

You're right. I haven't tried it. As I said. But I know what it is 'worth'. It is worth €28.95. Because that is how much the producer is selling it for without its new elaborate packaging. No-one, not even them, is claiming that being in a carbon fibre bottle makes the wine taste better (which it could not do), so I don't need to try it to know that is is bad value (I'm sure that carbon fibre bottles cost far more than glass ones, but to package a €30 wine in a €570 container would be absurd). I've met lots of the potential customers for this and not one of them was an empty bottle-collector.

Winky's completely right that many people will buy this because it is expensive, and only that, and more fool anyone who does so.

But someone buying it in the belief that it is expensive because it is staggeringly good will be disappointed, and that undermines the integrity of a product area within which I work, and about which I care greatly.

Still, it might limit the degree to which the actual good stuff increases in price, which might leave them within my grasp for a bit longer, so it's not all bad I suppose.

Now there's a rip-off.

Full of hot air.