Anyone speak French?

KristiferColumbus

KristiferColumbus

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I am thinking about buying a pair of these binoculars http://www.plastimo.com/en/jumelles-marines-7-x-50-etanches.html & have found that the whole binocular world is such a minefield with it being practically impossible to get to the bottom of the quality of a pair of binoculars that you might be interested in.That it has occurred to me that this 'rip off' might also extend to pricing.Fore instance could they be bought cheaper in France & posted here than bought here in the first place?
We are supposed to be in the 'common market' but does this extend to pricing? Can someone who can speak French take a look on French Chandlery websites & see what they go for please?
Much obliged & a Happy Christmas to all in advance.:encouragement:
 
google translate speaks french pretty well: Put the URL you want to translate into the text field and it'll translate the page:
https://translate.google.co.uk
I believe chrome will offer to do it automatically but I'm not a chrome user
Your big problem with ordering from France (unless it's high-cost-low-weight) is postage.
 
Another thought https://www.svb24.com/?t=find&action=results&query=binoculars

I don't think the French generally do 'competitive' pricing let alone cost effective mailing. I've used SVB.de for a Vetus helm pump. Cheapest offering by far and delivery was about 6 Euros and took 2 days.

If you click on the Union Jack the website cuts to English and their sales desk will reply to enquiries in English.
 
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KristiferColumbus said:
We are supposed to be in the 'common market' but does this extend to pricing?
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On e-Bay France they (or summat v similar) are £124. Easy enough to find using .fr as domain name in Google Advanced Search.

Incidentally, you're supposed to tbe in the European Union, although if you can find the prices we paid when it was the Common Market, we'd all be glad to hear about it. The EU does intervene on pricing, but mainly with importers/distributors rather than retailers (to the considerable help of UK customers with car prices, for instance). Retail price maintenance, which generally worked against consumer interests, was outlawed aeons ago. The other main effect of the EU is that it entitles you to shop anywhere in the EU (including on-line), and without tax/duty issues. For this reason the German on-line chandler SVB seems to be increasingly popular with UK boaters. Bankers and insurers, to name but two however, seem to be above all this.
 
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macd said:
The other main effect of the EU is that it entitles you to shop anywhere in the EU (including on-line), and without tax/duty issues. For this reason the German on-line chandler SVB seems to be increasingly popular with UK boaters. Bankers and insurers, to name but two however, seem to be above all this.
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That's probably for the best, then. From my former German housemate's description, we don't want German retail banking here. She was delighted to discover, on moving to the UK, that she could use almost any cash machine for free instead of having to hunt out the one belonging to her bank (which might not exist at all in other German towns if the bank was a smaller regional one), to receive interest on her account (albeit paltry) rather than have to pay a monthly fee, and not to have to pay additional fees all the time for normal day-to-day activities.

There's a lot to admire about German society, but in some ways it seems a bit old-fashioned. Her mum back home didn't believe her at first when she said the shops here are open on a Sunday.

Pete
 
I have a pair of outwardly similar bios, including the BAK4 on the centre boss. 7x50. Field angle 6.6; 116m/1000m and find them pretty good. Like most, sealed with nitrogen inside, so waterproof/fogproof. Paid IIRR €60 about 6 (?) yrs ago from the local chandlery. He is now only online, then kept a retail shop open.
French postage is usually pretty steep and prices in chandlerys equally. envoimainscher.fr is a good courier site, but whether you can get a supplier to use it.
DW
 
DownWest said:
I have a pair of outwardly similar bios, including the BAK4 on the centre boss. 7x50. Field angle 6.6; 116m/1000m and find them pretty good. Like most, sealed with nitrogen inside, so waterproof/fogproof. Paid IIRR €60 about 6 (?) yrs ago from the local chandlery. He is now only online, then kept a retail shop open.
French postage is usually pretty steep and prices in chandlerys equally. envoimainscher.fr is a good courier site, but whether you can get a supplier to use it.
DW
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I have the exact same pair. Bought from Youboat in Gosport for £29.95 about 6 years ago. The Plastimo ones seem identical but about 5 times the price due to the word ''Plastimo''
 
prv said:
That's probably for the best, then...
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Of course the other side of that coin, Pete, is that a German resident wishing to avail himself of a 'better' banking product would probably be turned down if he applied for a UK bank account. That's counter to the general thrust of how the EU works and certainly doesn't work in the consumer's interest. I don't know of any special dispensation enjoyed by banks, but maybe there is one. Possibly the banks would hide behind money-laundering regulations, but the truth is that they operate as suits them.
 
KristiferColumbus said:
I am thinking about buying a pair of these binoculars http://www.plastimo.com/en/jumelles-marines-7-x-50-etanches.html & have found that the whole binocular world is such a minefield with it being practically impossible to get to the bottom of the quality of a pair of binoculars that you might be interested in.That it has occurred to me that this 'rip off' might also extend to pricing.Fore instance could they be bought cheaper in France & posted here than bought here in the first place?
We are supposed to be in the 'common market' but does this extend to pricing? Can someone who can speak French take a look on French Chandlery websites & see what they go for please?
Much obliged & a Happy Christmas to all in advance.:encouragement:
Click to expand...

That particular model is available under a variety of brand names. For example (unbranded, but identical) from Force 4 at £69.95.

Like many generic products the binocular market can be confusing with many different types at widely varying prices. The mags regularly run comparison reviews which might be worth looking at, but as they are personal things, best to try before you buy.
 
prv said:
There's a lot to admire about German society, but in some ways it seems a bit old-fashioned. Her mum back home didn't believe her at first when she said the shops here are open on a Sunday.
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There's more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/4399866/Ten-crazy-German-rules.html

I can imagine there being a lot of British fans of No3.
(The rule quoted by the Torygraph was from just one German state, Hesse, and has since been repealed. However, according to Der Speigel there's a nationwide 'Quiet Time' from 8 p.m. until 7 a.m. and all day Sundays and holidays.
 
macd said:
There's more:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/4399866/Ten-crazy-German-rules.html

I can imagine there being a lot of British fans of No3.
(The rule quoted by the Torygraph was from just one German state, Hesse, and has since been repealed. However, according to Der Speigel there's a nationwide 'Quiet Time' from 8 p.m. until 7 a.m. and all day Sundays and holidays.
Click to expand...

That's rich, one of the UK's establishment rags, scoffing at German laws. Many countries have outdated and silly laws but the UK must surely be well up the list. From the New York Times:
The United Kingdom has accumulated rather a lot of laws over the centuries and many of them, having been devised hundreds of years ago, are now so redundant that they are laughable. Examples of this include the fact that it is still illegal to fire a cannon within 300 yards of someone's house or to beat a carpet in the street unless it is done before 8am in the morning. There are so many ridiculous and outdated laws in fact that the government has a a whole team of officials working behind the scenes to go through them all and prune out the useless ones.
Other examples of nonsensical laws that still exist in the UK include:
- Since 1939 it has been illegal to carry a plank of wood down the street
- It is illegal to 'handle a salmon under suspicious circumstances'
- It is illegal to use obscene language inside a library
- When walking down the street it is illegal to fly a kite or slide on ice or snow
- It is illegal to die inside the Houses of Parliament
- It is treason to place a postage stamp depicting the queen upside down on a letter
- It is illegal to move a dead body across county lines without a coffin
- It is illegal to import Polish potatoes
​

Many central European rules and laws that appear wacky are to protect apartment dwellers, who constitute the majority, from noisy neighbours. For that reason, I understand that under a Swiss ordinance, a man is forbidden to take a pee standing up after 10:00 p.m. Not that I've ever heard of a prosecution.
 
Barnac1e said:
That's rich, one of the UK's establishment rags, scoffing at German laws. Many countries have outdated and silly laws but the UK must surely be well up the list. From the New York Times:
The United Kingdom has accumulated rather a lot of laws over the centuries and many of them, having been devised hundreds of years ago, are now so redundant that they are laughable. Examples of this include the fact that it is still illegal to fire a cannon within 300 yards of someone's house or to beat a carpet in the street unless it is done before 8am in the morning. There are so many ridiculous and outdated laws in fact that the government has a a whole team of officials working behind the scenes to go through them all and prune out the useless ones.
Other examples of nonsensical laws that still exist in the UK include:
- Since 1939 it has been illegal to carry a plank of wood down the street
- It is illegal to 'handle a salmon under suspicious circumstances'
- It is illegal to use obscene language inside a library
- When walking down the street it is illegal to fly a kite or slide on ice or snow
- It is illegal to die inside the Houses of Parliament
- It is treason to place a postage stamp depicting the queen upside down on a letter
- It is illegal to move a dead body across county lines without a coffin
- It is illegal to import Polish potatoes
​
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I suspect several of those are apocryphal or mangled beyond recognition, there's loads of these lists circulating around that all crib from each other with no real sourcing or evidence. But yes, agree with the general thrust of your post that most places have plenty of silly old un-enforced laws on the books.

If I had to guess I'd say the US is probably top of the list for silly laws, purely because their lawmaking powers are so devolved. So a glorified parish council in Bum****, Nowhere can pass legislation about all manner of daft subjects, and if you add that up across the whole country you get an awful lot of good stories that are actually true.

http://loweringthebar.net/ is quite good for that.

Pete
 
Barnac1e said:
That's rich, one of the UK's establishment rags, scoffing at German laws.
Click to expand...

I'm no fan of the Torygraph, but I think "scoffing" is over-egging it a bit. The article itself describes the German rules as "quirky" which better matches the humourous slant I took from the piece. (Yes, the headline uses "crazy" but then sub-editors are notoriously dim.)

Incidentally, the assertion that it's "treason to place a postage stamp depicting the queen upside down on a letter" is nonsense; many of the others may be, too.

Where I live there's allegedly a statute allowing one to "shoot a Scotsman wearing a kilt on the foreshore" which gives me mixed feelings since my father was one. That's a myth, too (the statute, not my dad). But, living as I do in the parish of St German, I'm assiduous in never mowing the lawn or washing the car on a Sunday: easy when you possess neither ;)
 
macd said:
Incidentally, the assertion that it's "treason to place a postage stamp depicting the queen upside down on a letter" is nonsense; many of the others may be, too.
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You are right ... but why spoil a good story .... ? :rolleyes:

"The 1848 Treason Felony Act makes it a punishable offence to "imagine, invent, devise, or intend to deprive or depose" the reigning monarch. In other words, it's probably not a good idea to make the reigning monarch look silly. However, this act makes no specific mention of postage stamps.
Buckingham Palace has always declined to officially comment on the matter. However, Royal Mail officially put an end to speculation a few years ago by stating that "It's a myth and not true. There's nothing to say you can't put a stamp upside down,"
This position is backed up by the UK Law Commission, who states in an informal document that placing a stamp upside down on a letter is unlikely to fulfil the criteria set out by the Treason Felony Act."​
​

http://mentalfloss.com/uk/law/27306/is-it-treason-to-put-a-british-stamp-on-upside-down
 
Well, Barnacle, it seems Brits aren't bad at scoffing at themselves too (as if we didn't already know). This includes at least one of the ones you quoted:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/did-you-know-its-illegal-to-die-298718

Enjoy your Christmas pies (I'd always thought that one was a myth, but The Mirror claims not...but then they're still peddling the inverted stamp bollox).

They also claim it's an offence punishable by transportation to drift a thread quite this far, but I have my doubts ;)
 
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prv said:
I suspect several of those are apocryphal or mangled beyond recognition, there's loads of these lists circulating around that all crib from each other with no real sourcing or evidence. But yes, agree with the general thrust of your post that most places have plenty of silly old un-enforced laws on the books.

If I had to guess I'd say the US is probably top of the list for silly laws, purely because their lawmaking powers are so devolved. So a glorified parish council in Bum****, Nowhere can pass legislation about all manner of daft subjects, and if you add that up across the whole country you get an awful lot of good stories that are actually true.

http://loweringthebar.net/ is quite good for that.

Pete
Click to expand...

Clearly the U.S. residents of Bum****, Nowhere, haven't cornered the international market for moronic statements.
 
macd said:
Of course the other side of that coin, Pete, is that a German resident wishing to avail himself of a 'better' banking product would probably be turned down if he applied for a UK bank account. That's counter to the general thrust of how the EU works and certainly doesn't work in the consumer's interest. I don't know of any special dispensation enjoyed by banks, but maybe there is one. Possibly the banks would hide behind money-laundering regulations, but the truth is that they operate as suits them.
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That's down to the reluctance of Bank's and other organisations to share credit history, etc. mostly - do it wrongly and you get (rightly) hammered and a person's credit history doesn't just include that person's data of course, so it's not just a question of getting their permission. Also remember that the UK is not in the Eurozone which makes for a few more complications. Cross-currency and cross-corder transfers are classic money laundering techniques so the govermments and EU has a load of regulations about it, some sensible, some less so. The general upshot is that it is an expensive, complex and risky product to offer (big fines if you get it wrong) and a bit of a niche product so it just isn't cost effective. I can't think of many industries that are more regulated than Banks - biological weapons, maybe the nuclear industry - so I have no idea why you think they operate as suits them.
 
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