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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/12/airport-vat-tax-row-shops-heathrow-passengers-react
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'These shops have been very naughty': passengers react to airport VAT row | 'These shops have been very naughty': passengers react to airport VAT row |
(about 2 hours later) | |
There was outrage and a touch of weary resignation about reports of the airport retailers’ VAT “scam” at Heathrow on Wednesday. Most ire was saved for the fact that some of the country’s biggest retailers are involved. | |
Related: Airport VAT row: customers threatening to not show boarding passes | Related: Airport VAT row: customers threatening to not show boarding passes |
Geoff Dyer, 65, from Bristol, who is waiting in arrivals in Terminal 2, says he has been asked by retailers for his boarding pass every time he has shopped with them and feels cheated. “I just thought it was common practice,” Dyer, who is retired, says. | |
“I think it’s quite a low trick,” he adds. “Really now it’s every man for himself in this financial climate, but I think these shops, with the names they carry, have been very naughty.” | |
Dyer is part of a growing consumer backlash against airport retailers who insist on seeing passengers’ boarding cards in order to claim VAT relief – which is not passed on to the customer. Treasury minister David Gauke stressed on Wednesday that the savings were supposed to be passed on to customers – while Boots and Dixons announced new guidance to their staff to make it clear they cannot compel customers to show their cards. | |
Inside Terminal 5, people queuing at a checkout take a while to fiddle with their bags as they rummage through their travel documents. The process of shopping at airport retailers takes longer because travellers are asked to present their boarding passes when making a purchase. | |
“They asked me in Boots for my boarding pass and I thought you had to show it,” says Seamus, who is travelling to Belfast. “Now I feel a little bit dumb. When the transaction at an airport shop takes place it should be explained what you’re entitled to and what the arrangements are. I occasionally fly outside the EU, and if they ask for my boarding pass in the future I would challenge it and ask if I’m due a discount.” | |
John Cockram, 81, a retired restaurateur from Wales, takes a sterner view. “I think they have been dishonest,” he says. “When I was in business I couldn’t have got away with that – it’s almost like Starbucks,” he says, referring to the backlash against the coffee chain when its complicated tax arrangements were revealed. | |
Briton Ray Braybrook, who is travelling to Paris, says: “I think what they’re doing is defrauding the government. They knock the money off the goods, fair enough, but if they’re keeping it, that’s not right. If they asked me for my boarding pass I wouldn’t give it to them, knowing what we know now. We just assumed you had to give boarding passes over, even if it was for information gathering.” | |
Graham Downey, who flies to Egypt every three weeks and is this week flying to Manchester, says: “Even in WH Smith when you buy a chocolate bar you get asked for your boarding pass. They should be passing some of the VAT onto the customer to entice better shopping, because places like Dixons are quite expensive. It just puts you off a bit.” | |
Owen Evans, 32, blames the government for not stopping retailers taking advantage of the loophole. “It should be made illegal,” he says. “If the shops are playing the system, it’s the government’s fault for allowing them to do that. Anyone would do that if it’s legal. Obviously you want to do the best for your business. But obviously it’s not providing the best service for your customers.” | |
Hayley Burrey, 47, is waiting for a flight to Greece with her partner, Chris Lambert, 46, and their two daughters. She says the news has explained a lot about her experiences with duty-free retailers in the past. | |
“Last year we were trying to buy things and they were insisting on boarding passes,” Burrey, from Salisbury, says. “I thought ‘why do they need boarding passes even for small things?’” | |
Burrey says she and her daughter had been trying to buy an item from the fashion retailer Fat Face. But she had left her boarding passes with Lambert while he waited elsewhere for the call to board their flight. “I was really annoyed with this lady because I thought this doesn’t make sense,” she says, adding that other shops had let her off when she told them she didn’t have the documents with her. | |
Ian Hassey’s first response to the VAT revelation is to find it quite funny. But he quickly adds: “It’s quite scandalous actually, isn’t it? But it doesn’t surprise me at all in this country at the moment.” | |
Hassey, from Thetford, Norfolk, adds: “People are getting away with so much nowadays that people turn a blind eye to that. It’s just like companies not paying their full tax by having their head offices overseas. But I don’t think I would get away with it.” | |
Asked about ministers urging retailers to ensure discounts are passed on to customers, he says: “It’s just not good enough. Typical of them as well, isn’t it? You’re not shocked when you hear it certainly.” | |
Jonathan Stanton, head of digital retail at Nintendo and a regular traveller, says he wants the VAT he has paid in airport shops to be refunded. He says he feels cheated. “It’s unfair if they pocket the money,” he says. “It’s basically the VAT that we pay and they are pocketing it. | |
Related: The Boarding Pass Revolt: why passengers are taking a stand | Related: The Boarding Pass Revolt: why passengers are taking a stand |
“I thought it was just a security requirement. It was never explained to me at the time.” | |
Reggae singer Roy Ellis, who is waiting for a flight back to Switzerland, his adoptive homeland, says: “I never buy anything at duty free since I found out that things are usually cheaper in the country you’re going to.” | |
But, Ellis adds, the shops are serving a captive market who have already checked in their luggage and gone through security checks. “They take away your stuff then you go past these shops,” he says. “If you take a bottle of water, for example, they say you can’t take any liquid. The same thing they take away from you they then sell back to you in duty free.” | |