The wedding was attended by plenty of A-listers of course including Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and Isabella’s youngest sister Cressida Bonas, who is Prince Harry’s latest romantic interest.

Grangehurst is well known in South Africa as one of the country’s finest wineries despite being a tiny hands on operation, so this high profile event attended by plenty of Brits may well spread the word and give them good publicity over here as well.

If you want to try the wine they were all drinking it is imported by www.goodwineonline.co.uk and available at £17.95 per bottle while stocks last (which won’t be long!). But the good news is they sell the entire Grangehurst range, and Grangehurst are Wine Magazine South Africa’s most awarded 5 star winery, so you know their wines are something special!

You can read about the wedding here at the Mail Online.

Share this:

This takes excise duty to £2 per bottle for standard wine, plus VAT of course which comes to £2.40.

A typical bottle of spirits (40% abv, 70cl bottle) will increase by 40 pence plus VAT. And cider and alcopops will also increase.

The only relief was on beer as the government finally caved in to pressure from an assortment of campaigns within the British pub industry, and beer duty was actually reduced by 1p per pint. This is because beer is the UK’s traditional drink and is seen as a chore manufacturing enterprise creating jobs.

Wine on the other hand is virtually all imported, and with one eye on our balance of payments, is seen as fair game. Not great news for the UK wine industry which is experiencing torrid times. The average price of a bottle of wine sold in the UK last year was £5.04 – bearing in mind £2.74 was pure tax! There’s no margin to absorb this 12 pence increase so we will see cheap wine move to the next price point. No doubt we will soon see bottle sizes reduce as the supermarkets start offering their own label plonk in 50cl bottles or even cans or cardboard/plastic boxes to keep under sensitive price points.

If we factor in the ever weakening pound, and the global reduction in production in 2012 due to bad weather virtually worldwide, we’ll see some major price increases this year. The UK wine trade is forecast to shrink by as much as 10% in the next two years, and that is going to take some heavy casualties presumably from the struggling independent retail sector.

As I mentioned in a post on the budget last year, every time the government has increased duty on alcohol it has actually taken LESS in revenue as sales fall. Is it a ploy to make us drink less then? Sadly I don’t think they’re that clever and it’s just a poorly thought out tax increase. The UK now pays over 60% of all alcohol duties in the EU although we only consume about 10% of the alcohol.

And the duty escalator is still in place for next year when another 11p will go on a bottle of wine, meaning a 30p increase in 3 years. Day trip to France anybody?

Share this:

So what exactly is it that causes these diseases?

While the government and anti alcohol lobbies rack their brains (or lack of them!) for clues, we can do some basic detective work. Meat alone doesn’t cause cancer or heart disease but processed meat does – if we apply tradional logic here, the logical conclusion we draw then is that it is the processing that is the cause. This is exactly what I’ve been saying about processed wines for years – and exactly why the anti alcohol lobbies tell us that two glasses of wine a day will cause cancer.

There are so many chemicals in our food and drink these days that we have no idea what we’re eating and drinking. Frankly if we knew what was in there we wouldn’t eat it – exactly the same is true for processed wines too. Because it’s a liquid we somehow think that there can’t be anything harmful in there.

Sulphites are in nearly every processed food and drink in the UK, and these chemicals cause cancer – otherwise why would the medical profession insist anybody in remission for cancer cuts out all sulphites from their diet? Why has the World Health Organisation recommended banning them? The government and medical profession both know how harmful these sulphites are, but as there’s no viable alternative yet for mass produced foods (which we in the UK depend on as we have to import certain quotas from the EU)  it’s all being kept very quiet. The levels of sulphites and other harmful chemicals in mass produced wines is huge – over 80 different chemicals are permitted to be added. In fact cheap wine is virtually all chemical and no grape! And all those chemicals are playing havoc with our health.

Yet sulphite free natural wines are extremely beneficial to our health and will actually REDUCE THE LIKELIHOOD OF CONTRACTING CANCER BY 50%. And reduce the risk of HEART DISEASE BY 50% too. In fact they help combat a whole host of ailments including stroke, dementia, blood pressure, osteoporsis….. and loads more. Read all about the benefits of good sulphite free wines in this post here.

Share this:

We all trusted Google when it was a free site to give an honest comparison - but those days are coming to an end. In fact in 2004 Google actually stated that Google shopping was a fair and unbiased system precisely because they didn’t charge retailers to advertise their products! I guess when you float on the stockmarket for $80 billion or whatever it was, that you have to start clawing that money back somehow, and one way or another ultimately it has to come from the consumer!

Google Shopping is now becoming a purely commercial venture only directing you to the sites that pay them the most commission, so you the consumer also pay the highest price!

This means that they will prioritise and display products from websites which pay them, and the system is massively complicated on a “bid per click” system. Effectively retailers can only display products on Google Shopping by subscribing to an adwords campaign where they bid against each other for keywords/products. The higher the bid the higher the relevance on Google Shopping, and many retailers will disappear altogether.

This means that a retailer with a very competitive price is unlikely to get listed as they will not be able to bid as much as a retailer selling at an over inflated price – so you, the consumer, will only see the higher priced listing and end up paying this price. The over priced retailer still makes money and Google makes a lot of money while the competitive retailer loses out altogether (and possibly closes down!). And guess where that money comes from..? YOU! They rolled this out across the USA last year to great resistance from small internet retailers.

Amazon has effectively been doing something similar for the last couple of years. It lists millions of products that it doesn’t stock, with agreements in place with thousands of retailers to supply these products and pay Amazon a large commission – I know one online wine retailer was asked for 16% which when many work on 20% to 25% gross margin is just ridiculous. But it shows just how out of touch with the real world companies like Amazon really are – it’s ok for them yo base themselves in the Netherlands to (legally) avoid paying UK corporation tax, and just to take commissions off other UK retailers without doing any work, but the rest of us have to work for a living and have overheads to pay!

Both Amazon and Google Shopping are able to do this because they command all the top spots on Google, and it’s very difficult for the public to find the information they want as Google controls where it directs them. Google Shopping because it is part of Google obviously, and Amazon do it by paying for advertising with Google.

So as a consumer looking for the best deal what can you do?

Well, the good news is it is still possible (at the moment) to find a good deal, but it’s not easy. At present there are still generic product ads on there in “shopping” but these are likely to be phased out and replaced with the ads which pay the most money. But going forward the first rule ever when looking to buy something is “never use comparison sites” as by their very definition they will NEVER give you the best deal (unless you land incredibly lucky somehow). Google Shopping has become just that – a paid for comparison site, so avoid it! Comparison sites only list products/services from suppliers who pay them a commission. So if there is room in the margin to pay a comparison site, there is room to offer a better price in the first place.

For example today I googled and found a comparison site called winesdirect.co.uk who tell me the best deal in the UK  for Susana Balbo Brioso is with Selfridges at £34.99 – see links below. However when I look around a bit I find the same wine with www.goodwineonline.co.uk for £24.00. So how much commission out of the £10.99 per BOTTLE (not case!) extra do you think is going to winesdirect.co.uk?

http://www.winesdirect.co.uk/searchresults.aspx?s=1&frmfrom=side

http://www.goodwineonline.co.uk/acatalog/info_122.html

Why if they’re supposed to be a genuine comparison site do winesdirect.co.uk not know about goodwineonline’s price? Quite simply because like all comparison sites they only list wines from retailers who pay them a commission! And Google Shopping has now moved over to this format as well! Ironically they say it is to improve the customer shopping experience but this is a load of baloney as it will dramatically reduce the customer’s choice and push up the price. It is simply about making money for Google and closing down a large number of small internet retailers while strengthening the multi-nationals.

It’s also rather short sighted of Google. The general public are not stupid. They will quickly begin to realise that there’s less competition and fewer choices available to them, and they’ll shop around by using other mediums. Google will quickly lose the credibility they’ve worked so hard to build so if you own shares in Google now may be a very wise time to offload them (despite the large drop they’ve already taken!).

Small retailers will be forced to find alternative ways of advertising their products, and no doubt another search engine provider such as Bing will step in and fill the void. Google is in effect going to destroy it’s own monopoly of 80% of internet traffic! I would expect the board will be in for a torrid time at the next AGM, then down Job Centre Plus after the one following that! But who knows, just maybe they’ll see sense and realise Google is where it is today because it provided the general public with a fair, open unbiased cross section of information? Well, we can hope anyway!!

So if you value freedom of choice, and you actually want to be presented with fair and unbiased information before you make a purchase, steer well clear of Google Shopping and Amazon, as well as all other comparison sites. Spend a little time sifting through Google’s generic listings – or Yahoo, Bing etc, as you’re almost certain to find a better deal and save yourself a considerable amount of money!

Share this:

A local takeaway offers “fillet steak in cantonese sauce” for a bargain £5. As that includes £0.83 pence VAT plus their profit, do we really believe it is fillet steak? Or even any steak?

So this high profile exposure of horse meat being in wide circulation in so many pre-packed foods has made people consider what they’ve actually been eating for all these years, from these trusted sources such as supermarkets and big brands. Well then isn’t it about time that we applied that logic to the world of wine?

I’ve written numerous articles about the value of wine and what goes into this factory produced plonk that we buy on the high street. There are 80+ chemical additives permitted in mainstream wines, and 43 additives permitted in EU certified organic wines! When a wine is retailing at £4.99, take off UK VAT £0.83, UK excise duty at £1.90, international shipping at £0.25 and the cost of the bottle, screwcap, cardboard box and label £0.30, and you’re left with £1.71 which is essentially the retailer margin. The wine is worth virtually nothing, so what do you think is in there? Pure fermented grape juice, from hand picked grapes grown on the best slopes of a prestigious vineyard? NO – it is the vinuous equivalent of horse meat or worse still “meat dirivative”!

There is more added chemical than grape juice. Do you ever wonder why you feel so rotten the following morning although you only had 3 or 4 glasses of wine the night before? Well, the government and health lobbies will tell us that alcohol is so bad for us – but is it the alcohol? Look at rural France and Italy where the locals regularly drink several litres of wine every day and have done so all their lives for eighty plus years, and these people are still tending their vines and farms, more spritely than the average 40 year old Brit! The French paradox as it is known!

The government has got it’s message very confused. Alcohol itself in moderation is not so bad for us, certainly not if you stick to the fictional “recommended units” as invented by the government after rejecting the findings of the entire medical consultation they had commissioned on the subject – basically the medical experts didn’t give the answer the government had hoped for, so they just went and invented their own safe limits instead! (About half of what the medical experts recommended!)

Alcohol is not so bad in moderation but a lot of UK alcoholic drinks are very bad for us! Why? Because they contain a cocktail of artificial chemicals and have no natural goodness in them whatsoever. Sound familiar? Yes, it’s just like all the processed foods we’ve been tricked into eating. I remember recently one study which found there was more nutritional value in the cardboard packaging than there was in a breakfast cereal!

But the good news is the resurgence in British farmed foods, grown locally, eaten fresh. Small farm shops and similar are enjoying more popularity as Brits are realising just how much healthier these foods really are. “You are what you eat” was a common phrase a while back – well I’m very glad I haven’t been eating this cheap processed rubbish from the big retailers. “20 sausage rolls for £1″ – what on earth is in them?

Well the same is possible with wine. You don’t have to drink this highly chemicalled factory produced plonk widely available in the multiple retailers. You can get good healthy natural wine from specialist websites like www.goodwineonline.co.uk which is not just not bad for you, but is actually good for you (in moderation of course!).

Many people assume a hangover is the natural unavoidable after effect of a good night out – we ll it isn’t! It’s the after effect of a cocktail of chemicals – you’ve been drinking the wrong stuff – and it is completely avaoidable. I haven’t had a hangover in ten years, and I’ll drink several bottles of wine over a good night! I just drink the right stuff, made with pride in small independent wineries not in factories, without the addition of all these nasty chemicals.

Next time you’re in the wine aisle at your local supermarket and you’re actually being taken in by one of their seemingly too good to be true half price offers, take a look over at their own label sausages and burgers. That’s what you’re buying – or the bottled equivalent at least!

Share this:

So at £5.04 RRP what is the wine actually worth?

Firstly let’s remove the VAT of £0.84 to leave £4.20.

Then let’s remove the retailer margin of 33% (some make more than this!) to leave £2.80 

Now let’s remove the Excise Duty of £1.90 to leave £0.90

Let’s remove the international shipping charge of £0.20 leaving £0.70

Glass bottle, label design & print, cardboard box, screwcap/cork £0.20 leaving £0.50

Uk transport to point of sale £0.20 leaving £0.30

So the average “worth” of a bottle of wine sold in the UK is just 30 pence! That is pretty grim in itself, but that is the average.  Allowing for all the higher end wines sold, there must be a lot sold more cheaply than this – about 85% of the total Uk consumption is mass produced rubbish so allowing for big brands around the £7.99 mark I’d expect about half of this to be the really cheap and nasty stuff. Many of the supermarket buyers are instructed to spend no more than US$0.35 per bottle – bottled and labelled! That means the wine is literally worth about 5 pence.

Do we expect this to be delicious healthy freshly squeezed and fermented grape juice? You wouldn’t risk buying a beef burger for 5 pence would you? So why risk a wine at this price? At least with the burger scandal it still contains meat, but what goes in these wines instead of grapes? Well here’s some of the permitted additives below:

Permitted additives in wine

calcium alginate
potassium alginate
potassium caseinate
casein
isinglass
silicon dioxide
edible gelatine
acacia (gum arabic)
milk/lactalbumin
proteins of plant origin
ovalbumin (egg white)
alumino silicates
ferrous sulphate

polyvinyl-polypyr-rolidone (PVPP)
activated charcoal

lactic bacteria
neutral potassium tartrate
potassium bicarbonate
calcium carbonate

copper sulphate

oak chips
metatartaric acid
water

concentrated grape must
rectified concentrated grape must
saccharose
tannin
oxygen

betaglucanase
pectolytics
urease

fresh lees
ammonium bisulphite
thiamine hydrochloride
yeast cell walls
yeasts for wine production
diammonium phosphate
ammonium sulphate
ammonium sulphite

fresh lees
potassium ferrocyanide

calcium phytate
citric acid

calcium tartrate
potassium bitartrate
yeast mannoproteins

sorbic acid
sulphur dioxide
argon
nitrogen
potassium bisulphite
dimethyl dicarbonate (DMDC)
carbon dioxide
potassium metabisulphite/disulfite
allyl isothiocyanate
lysozyme
potassium sorbate
ascorbic acid

So next time you’re tempted by one of these highly contentious “half price” offers in the supermarket stop and think. Are they friendly companies helping the beleagured public through this tough economic time as they like to portray, or are they global corporations making money out of us at any cost? In the UK they sell masses of processed foods full of dubious additives, and exactly the same with wine! They make a fortune out of their wine sales, which would be physically impossible if these were genuine offers.

As I get older I think back to the old sayings we used to hear growing up. As kids we used to disregard them but I’m now realising they were all born out of experience and wisdom which comes with age. “If you’ve got your health you’ve got everything”. Well we all have the option to make informed choices about what we put in our bodies.

I don’t eat or drink anything processed. I drink a lot of wine but I’ve not had a hangover in years. I’ve not had a cold or flu or any other illness for several years either since I’ve been drinking good natural wines. I’m not saying they cure everything but they are a good healthy lifestyle option (in moderation) as they contain natural anti oxidants and other substances which are actively very beneficial healthwise. Cancer rates across the UK have soared since the introduction of processed food and drink. Yet good natural wine can reduce your likelihood of contracting cancer by as much as 50%. Plus the same for stroke, heart disease, dementia, Parkinsons and a whole host of other ailments. In fact good wine is a medicine and a tonic – mass produced chemical infused “wines” are the opposite.

Read all about the benefits here

If you get chance go to the RAW Natural Wine Fair in London on May 19th to try some delicious healthy wines!

Share this:

RAW 2013 is being held over two days again, Sunday 19th May which is open to the public (as well as trade) and Monday 2oth May which is trade only day, although opening to the public in the evening to help get rid of any remaining wines! Isabelle has timed this fair to coincide with the London International Wine Fair once again as London is full of wine professionals from all over the world. It should be a great event with over 200 producers exhibiting once again. Tickets are £25 on the door.

Last year’s atmosphere was really buzzing, informal and fun helped by the Bohemian venue, the great choice of natural foods on offer and of course the great array of wines. There aren’t many wine fairs the public can attend where they can taste over 500 wines without the risk of a hangover! Isabelle is very strict on her entry requirements so you can be assured these wines are all natural.

The Real Wine Fair hosted by a consortium of importers (who had split from Isabelle after their original fair The Natural Wine Fair in 2011) is also on again this year, although they’ve moved it forward to March. Both fairs were on at the same time last year effectively competing against each other, and reading between the lines I think they came off second best. I attended both fairs and found them as different as chalk and cheese.

RAW was fun and vibrant, the Real Wine Fair was dull with everybody very serious and talking in hushed tones. To be fair the venue wasn’t good as it was split into several basement rooms, and turnout when I was there was very low with only a handful of people in each room. The mood wasn’t exactly lightened by the expressions on the faces of the producers who had all travelled to this fair and no doubt realised they’d backed the wrong horse! Many of the wines weren’t natural either (in my opinion), with only 3 or 4 producers with sulphite free wines – but perhaps they prefer to leave these to Isabelle while they concentrate on more mainstream wines? They do make a point of saying it’s about individual terroir with organic or biodynamic farming rather than stating “natural” so it’s very much up to the individual’s own interpretation of what natural really means when it comes to wine. For me it means no chemical intervention but perhaps for them it just means less intervention than in factory produced wines?

The Real Wine Fair is taking place on Sunday17th March (public and trade) and Monday 18th March (trade only) at Tobacco Dock, Wapping E1W 2 SF. The Monday coincides with a Wines of California tasting so trade day could be very quiet with many choosing to visit on the Sunday instead which could of course be busier as a result. While smaller than RAW they expect 100 producers and 600 wines so there’s still plenty to choose from. Food will be available from a pop up restaurant and various stalls. Tickets £15 in advance or £20 on the door.

Share this:

Like most diseases, there are things you can do to either slow down or even prevent the onset of dementia, but there doesn’t seem to be any concise information out in the public domain to tell us. Well the good news is that you can significantly decrease your risk of dementia or Alzeimher’s disease by drinking good quality wine!

Here is a peice taken from Dr Phil Norrie’s (MBBS, MA ,MSc, MSocSc(Hons), PhD, MD(cand) article on the subject. Dr Phil is a highly qualified and experienced Doctor as well as a great winemaker. Full article available here: http://www.dowiedoole.com/media/docs/wineisdifferent.pdf

“Antioxidants, especially resveratrol in wine, stimulate a nerve enzyme called Mitogen Activated Protein (MAP) kinase which stimulates nerve cells and helps them regenerate their dendrites or nerve interconnections. Thus Dr. Alberto Bertelli from University of Milan, the world authority on the subject states “By daily reinforcing these contacts we can prevent neurodegeneration” (Such as dementia and Parkinson’s disease)”.

 In fact Dr Phil Norrie goes on to state a huge array of benefits from drinking good wine  including a big reduction in the likelihood of contracting cancer, heart disease and a whole host of other illnesses including “Reduced Alzheimer’s disease and mult infarct (stroke) forms of dementia by up to 80%. Reduced Parkinson’s disease”

This is great news. But please note this is only from drinking good wines made naturally NOT drinking the highly chemicalled wines available from supermarkets, grocery chains and the vast majority of high street outlets including pubs and restaurants. These wines are made on an industrial scale and contain very little or no natural anti oxidants, just a cocktail of chemicals which can actually be harmful rather than beneficial.

 But if we seek out the right wines there is a massive health benefit to be gained quite simply from switching to drinking good healthy wines rather than the big mass produced brands.

Share this:

Winemaking or playing number 8 for the Pumas?

Mauricio Lorca, owner and winemaker at Bodega Y Vinedos Mauricio Lorca, is one of Argentina’s finest winemakers. His superb wines are now available to buy online in the UK.

Mauricio has been head winemaker at boutique winery Enrique Foster for a number of years, and before that learned his trade at such famous wineries as Catena and Luigi Bosca. Since his talents have been widely recognised, he is now also a consultant winemaker for a number of other wineries, but far more excitingly has his own winery and vineyards where he has free reign to make the style of wines he chooses.

His vineyards are in arguably one of the best sites in all Argentina – Vista Flores in the Uco Valley about 50 miles outside Mendoza, while his winery is a little nearer Mendoza in Lujan de Cuyo.

Mauricio is uniquely known for his non use of oak in some (but certainly not all of his wines). His Opalo range are completely unoaked, letting the fruit do all the talking. To make top wines in this style you need optimum quality fruit and oodles of winemaking ability, not to mention a suitable winery. Mauricio’s winery uses concrete fermenting tanks (as opposed to wood or stainless steel) which enable him to both ferment and more importantly mature his Opalo wines without any wood contact.

But Mauricio does use quality French oak for his other wines. Fantasia is his “entry level” - good quality wines at affordable prices for everyday drinking. To break into the UK market Mauricio was persuaded by Naked Wines to make them some own label wines (which were branded “Lirico” I believe). Mauricio had to balance the risk to his reputation against the publicity to get his wines on sale in the UK. Reading the reviews on Naked Wines’ own website these Lirico wines didn’t exactly blow anybody away (nearly all mention the word “thin”), but that is the risk taken when wines are made on price not ability and passion.

The good news is that his Fantasia wines are significantly better and they’re basically the same price. Mauricio uses quality fruit, all hand harvested into small boxes (20kg) to avoid damage. For his Fantasia wines, the reds are part oaked (30%) while the whites are pure with no wood contact. These wines are really good everyday drinking wines with good fruit structure and some complexity, ideal with food.

But it’s when you get onto Mauricio’s Poetico range that you see just how good his wines really are. While his unoaked Opalo wines are delicious with real fruit expression, his Poetico wines combine this fruit with French oak to make some of the best wines in Argentina.

At the time of writing this Mauricio’s wines were only available through Argentine wine specialist www.goodwineonline.co.uk and www.argentinewineonline.co.uk but it’s likely some other retailers will take them on. Goodwineonline offer a “next working day” delivery to anywhere mainland UK, while Argentinewineonline offer set day delivery depending on your location via London City Bond’s courier service, so Mauricio’s wines are accessible to just about everybody in the UK.

Share this:

Facebook and Twitter are self explanatory. They can actually be useful for people who live a distance away from their friends and relatives, particularly for those who have emigrated. But the sad fact is they are mostly used by people with time on their hands to exchange information about mundane daily activities. Yet all this information is stored, much of it analysed and sold on to corporations to be used to market goods and services to the unsuspecting public. In that respect it’s no different to a Tesco Clubcard or Nectar points scheme – where all your spending is recorded then used to analyse you, so Tescos will know more about your actual spending patterns than you yourself will!

Businesses are told that they need to be on Facebook and Twitter to interact with their potential customers. I can see this being necessary for the younger generation coming through as they’ve grown up with these. But give it a few years and people will begin to realise what a horrendous mistake all this sharing of their private information and habbits has been, and I suspect Facebook etc will fade away and the global corporations will have to find other ways to gather information to part people from their hard earned money.

But for the time being it’s here to stay so Google have jumped on the bandwagon with “targeted advertising”. If you’ve been browsing for shoes for example, next time you go online you’ll notice these little adverts in your browser for shoes no less - how do they know? I don’t want to be targeted – I like to think I choose where and when I shop, but we can all be tempted by a well targeted advert!

But the worst of all the new advancements on the internet is the prevalence of comparison sites. If I Google for something looking for information about a product (rather than looking to purchase one), I get a full page of comparison sites on page 1 with no useful information whatsoever, just an attempt to make some money out of me. By their very nature comparison sites are NEVER the cheapest place to buy anything because the retailers all pay commissions to the comparison site!

These comparison sites don’t list all retailers (or anywhere even close) , ONLY THE ONES WHO PAY THEM COMMISSION!

By far the worst of all these is Amazon.co.uk. A UK company? Well no. Despite their “.co.uk” suffix they have based themselves in the Netherlands to avoid (legally) paying UK corporation tax. Instead of making a fair contribution to the UK Treasury as all small and medium businesses have to, they are able to avoid 26% UK corporation tax in exchange for approximately 0.5%  corporation tax with the Netherlands tax office.

But it isn’t just Amazon. According to a recent BBC investigation over half the FTSE100 companies in the UK are doing it, costing the UK Treasury (and you and me in reality) billions of pounds a year.

The issue with Amazon isn’t the tax avoidance (legal if not entirely moral) though. It is the fact they don’t even stock the product in the majority of cases. They get to the top of Google so you put in your order for three different products thinking they will all be sat in their warehouse somewhere. Amazon then send their retailers instruction to despatch to you, then bill the retailer a hefty chunk for doing so. You then receive three different deliveries from three different companies. Even when this works it can take weeks for the products to arrive, all at different times of course. In my experience I’ve had products not arrive, Amazon refuse to give me an update on them telling me “they don’t have to speak to me until the items are 14 days overdue!” How’s that for customer service?

The biggest issue here though is that the consumer could have bought the items direct at a cheaper price in the first place, and received prompt professional service – but it’s all down to Amazon and other comparison sites ranking so highly on Google, preventing the consumer from finding the retailer in the first place.

By all accounts Google and Amazon are having a bit of a ding dong both trying to dominate the internet market. This is killing off so many small retailers who just can’t compete with the big players for rankings on Google. Amazon is even selling wines (appearing to be a UK based website of course) which are actually being sold and delivered by a German company so there is no UK excise duty (£1.90 plus VAT per bottle) and no UK VAT. So that’s no UK corporation tax, no UK VAT and no UK duty on wines being purchased in the UK! How is a genuine UK retailer supposed to compete with that?

Share this: