You Know, With The "decrease In Value" For The Value Of The

[Shmargin]

You know, with the "decrease in value" for the value of the euro to the dollar, during the transactions, thay have made a quarter of a million dollars without shipping anything.

 

[ion]

I'm not sure you know how currency conversion works..

 

[foft]

Just guessing, but...

The parts are paid for in dollars typically. So any funds they kept in pounds or euros will have got worth a lot less - 15-25%... Of course the dollar price _should_ have been reduced (and more parts available) due to lower demand to match. Anyway I'd hope that the accounts were in the currency of purchase (or hedged) for lower risk...

Mark

edit: Not to mention that the euro/pound price were fixed a while ago before any significant fall I think... i.e. at unfavourable rates.

 

[TaG]

Why create a new thread to just copy a post you made in another thread?

Especially when it just shows your ignorance.

 

[shmuck]

They've made nothing. If anything, they've likely lost money on processing fees.

There seems to be a lot of confusion here, so maybe a little explanation:

Look at this graph: http://www.x-rates.com/d/EUR/GBP/graph120.html

When you paid for your preorder, you did it in pounds - if you remember, gbax.com gave you a price in Euros initially and then converted it to pounds for you when it came time to pay. Your bank then took that charge in pounds and converted to a deduction in Euros against your bank account (or a charge on your credit card bill).

That conversion by your bank was done at the current rate at the time, in early October. When the money was refunded, it was refunded in pounds and your bank again took that credit and converted it for you at the current rate in late November. As you can see from the graph, there's been a sharp decline in the conversion rate between early October and late November. This accounts for the difference.

When it comes time to reorder, however, you will again be doing it in pounds and because the times are closer together, the conversion rate between your refund and your reorder should be very similar. Thus the cost of your reorder should be virtually the same as the money that was refunded to you.

Result: No loss for you, and no gain for them.

Substitute Euros for US Dollars, Canadian Dollars, etc. - everyone who ordered from gbax.com did it in pounds.

 

[raytaller]

I wonder why this forum is so infested with 14 years old silly nerds creating 10 useless topics a day. Don't they have some homework to do, instead of trolling this forum ?

 

[Chip]

The parts are paid for in dollars typically. So any funds they kept in pounds or euros will have got worth a lot less - 15-25%... Of course the dollar price _should_ have been reduced (and more parts available) due to lower demand to match. Anyway I'd hope that the accounts were in the currency of purchase (or hedged) for lower risk...

Unfortunately, that is not the case. All orders to Craig's shop were converted to GBP, as we're using a British bank. Since all parts are being paid for in USD, we've actually lost a substantial amount of money.

Since the OP is clearly confused, I'll give you an example using nice round numbers. If you ordered in Euros, just replace "USD" with "Euros" in the following example, as the GBP v USD and GBP vs Euro graphs look rather similar for the past few months.

• Pretend the Pandora goes on sale for $100USD and the parts cost $90USD.
• Now pretend that when the orders came in, 1 USD was worth 0.5GBP.
• If 1000 people order Pandoras, that's $100,000USD, which is converted into 50,000GBP.
• The parts for those 1000 Pandoras cost $90,000
• You with me so far? Good. Skip forward by a couple months and one big financial crisis.
• Assuming everybody reorders, we still have 50,000GBP in the bank.
• Due to currency shifts, 1 USD is now worth 0.75GBP.
• When the 50,000GBP is converted to USD to pay for parts, it is now only worth $66,667USD (rounded up).
• Unfortunately, those parts still cost $90,000USD.
• The difference comes out of our pockets.

Obviously this is just an abstraction, and our financial situation is not quite that bad. There were plenty of orders which were not affected at all, and many of the parts are already paid for. However, you can clearly see how the international financial situation combined with the bank screwing us over has left us considerably worse off than if neither of those things happened. For somebody to imply that we're somehow making out better because of this whole mess is frankly a little insulting.