I have now great news! I contacted the lawyer this morning and he was very understanding, i explained him everything.....
He made a compromise and cut down the fine into half!
I will be paying now 100CHF! Yuhu....so this is a good experience I am passing on to the people on EF!
Just have the good arguments and fight for you what you believe in and try to negotiate and you will get what you want!
Have a great day everyone!
Beside to what and how i feel, it can be very true!
I dont look Swiss at all, but I have a very FAIR colour!!! and on that day, I just dyed my hair fresh dark BLACK!
Last but not Least! Louis Vuitton is making money from the people who buy their goods, AND from the people who DON'T!!!
I paid LV twice!
One fake thing was given to me and I travelled with it over 10 years!
Anyway, now it is over and I am looking at the full half of the glass, 100 CHF is fair enough!
My thoughts exactly. You get a handle of the bag, and not the bag itself. Last time I checked it was around EUR2,000-3,000.
Just an addition to the customs officers issue.. I heard that when you start arguing, you get more fines / taxes (they can also stop you and make you pay Swiss VAT when you return from shopping in out-of-Suisse). So better keep silent and agree.
I assume that might have been the case with the OP...
Fail
I'm Asian and have done a fair amount of travelling in and out of Zurich. Never ever been stopped.
The word is "timeless" dahhling....
saved you another 100 chf
On a global scale. I'd bet that the percentage is better in Zurich.
600 Euros is a fairly low end model then... Honestly, I have waited in line in front of a LV shop on vacation before myself: The brand never has discounts and in this way you can at least shop tax free. (and some say that the money some of the mainland chinese tourists burn here is not exactly the one on their tax declarations...)
If you think so - buy some of their stocks. The company is called LVMH and their Moet and Hennesy stuff isn't low margin either.
But to make the picture a bit more balanced:
- How much is the rent for their flagship stores?
- How much is their advertising?
In short: It is not only a high margin business, it is a high margin-extremly high cost business.
I'm more Hermes ...but they have some troubles with LVMH.
Telecom is also high cost business (building infrastructure) but it does not have such margins (after liberalization).
Spot on! I worked in the industry, I know how it works! Same for the LV leather they used. LV will order 1000 piece of that leather and the manufacturer will make 2000 of them, same quality, same partern. They give the order back to LV and sell or send the other 1000 to their production. A fake LV can be as good as the original.... believe me, those are not sold for 30-60 euro but more like 300-500 euro. How do I know that? Oh, ummmh, a friend of mine has one...
Yep, it is such a huge market, the company didn't want to let pass this opportunity. Let's not foul ourselves, LV and brand names gets their money from the fakes too! Too much money into the equation...
Nope LV is already making good money from this market, this is why they don't go after the factories... But the play on the image of the poor guy who gets copied and here is the fine (extra cash) to the customer who didn't put 1000$ on their bag but ''just'' 50$...
What kills the brand this huge amount of fake going around.... it isn't cool and sophisticated anymore to own a LV. Because everytime you see one, you'll think it is a fake.... They know that, they have to get as much as possible from it (fakes included) before the brand lose his Timeless, posh image.