is it any wonder that high street shops are suffering??

high street shops are a bunch of robbing bastards, bought some stuff yesterday - £34 for a tub, saw the same stuff on amazon for £17 for 2 tubs 

then i went to maplins for an HDMI to DVI connector, £13 in shop, bought it for £1.40 on ebay.

and they bitch and moan about a drop in sales?? maybe when they realize that folks don't like paying such disproportionate odds for products they might realize why they are suffering, though i think is all they are after, so fuck em

Depends on the size of the shop I suppose as to what they can buy in what quantities and keep in stock which has a bearing on what they pay and therefore how much they have to charge to make a profit, then there's rent for the premises and business council tax which being on the high street in town is still pretty high apparently, the proprietor has to make a living not slave wages like the people who actually make them.
A friend of mine runs a small monumental mason business he only gets about ten of the most popular 'stones' in at any time he pays £95:00 each, the big business in the next town buys 100 or so at a time, they get them for £45:00, so of course that effects the price each can charge. Even with staff to pay they manage to undermine his prices a lot of the time, especially when he's given customers a quote, and he only has to pay his own wages plus one.

yeah i get that part of it, and your example is small business.

however, how can maplins justify charging £14 for a connector that you can buy on ebay for £1.40 with free postage?? Im a dedicated capitalist who believes in the system, and 9i fully accept that companies have to make profit over and above their expenses,

however maplins are buying the item from the same slave workers that the ebay seller is and yet they rocket their prices, even though maplins will be able to bulk buy in a way the ebay seller cant, so by your example maplins should be cheaper than the ebay seller.

corporate greed in my eyes, which has earned them a lost sale.