In a twist on the low value consignmnent relief (LVCR) story, the
Telegraph has a piece on Channel Islands
retailers using a loophole to send goods costing more than
£18 without paying VAT. It said some retailers were sending
packages showing high postage costs while the goods within are
shown to be below £18. It gives the example of
Amazon seller and Channel Islands business
Flash_Memory. The newspaper said it had seen a
jiffy bag containing a flash card, priced at £39.99 with
p&p, showing a postage cost of £22 and a product cost of
£17.99, even though postage was only likely to cost around
50p. For more on LVCR see the May issue of
Direct Commerce.
Online sales at Superdry owner SuperGroup rose
180 percent in the fourth quarter and more than doubled over the
course of the year. The retailer, which recently introduced
foreign-language websites in France, Belgium and Germany, saw
total retail sales increase 71 percent to £147 million in
the year to 1st May 2011. Profit is expected to be in line with
expectations.
More than 100 jobs will be lost at electricals retailer
Comet as owner Kesa announces it is to close 10
stores and 12 service centres, reports the Guardian. The retailer reported a 15 percent
sales slump since the start of the year, with online sales
falling by 8 percent.
Whoops! General merchandiser Sears is in hot
water with religious groups in the US after they discovered that
the retailer was selling sexually explicit DVDs on its website.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Sears has since removed
the offensive material.
After an appearance on BBC’s Watchdog programme earlier
this month, social shopping platform Groupon was
rapped by the ASA for misleading customers. ASA upheld complaints
and instructed Groupon not to advertise sales promotions if it
could not demonstrate they were genuine.
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