Buying Whisky in the USA just got cheaper (and clearer)

Good news everyone… Buying whisky in the USA just got cheaper (and clearer).

As many of you will know, here at MOM we’ve been selling things at the same price in the US and UK for a long time, in both cases incorporating the cost of the local taxes into the price of the whisky so you could always see exactly what you were going to be charged on the product page before you even got to the checkout, without any “hidden extras”.

Of course, there was still the shipping cost to add on, but everyone already knows shipping is a thing, so it’s not exactly a shock when you get to the checkout.

Now, although the tax regimes in the two countries are quite different (the UK has VAT at 20%, the US has a whole bunch of taxes and duties which are, by and large, lower than those of the UK), we found that if we covered all the US duty and customs clearance costs from the price of the drinks there was still enough left over to subsidise the cost of the shipping, bringing it down from “ridiculously high” to just “higher than we’d like”.

So that’s what we did, and all was well, except that an increasing number of people have been telling us they’d rather see the different costs broken down separately rather than have them included in the product price.

It makes the whole thing a little more complex, but it does make it completely transparent, so that’s what we’re going to do.

That means from today you’ll see massively reduced product prices (with no tax, duty, shipping, signature or customs costs bundled in) together with an additional line at the checkout called “Customs Charges” which now includes those things.

We’ve had to slightly increase our shipping costs to reflect the actual cost of sending stuff to the States now we’re not subsidising it so heavily. (We are working with our US shipping partners to reduce costs further, but even as they stand now they should still be less than you’ll pay elsewhere).

The really good news is we’ve also taken the opportunity to look at our pricing and make additional reductions across the board, in some cases significant reductions.

We don’t think you’ll be able to find the same delivered prices anywhere else, in fact, if you can then please let us know and we’ll almost certainly match it. (We might even pop an extra dram of something nice in your order to thank you for bringing it to our attention!)

So, there we go – lower prices overall and a more transparent charging structure. That takes care of Wednesday.

Have a good week everyone.

Cheers,

The Chaps at Master of Malt