Every summer, prior to school starting up in Germany, there's this hype by school kids over the 'new' bag to be bought.
School bags....if you follow this business....are critical to the status of the kid. My German wife made a big deal out of this as first grade came up with the kid, and repeated this yearly. About the third year of this....I started to question the cost factor.
I'd look at the stupid bag and figure it couldn't be more than 25 Marks (roughly $12.50), and I'd get this lecture (by the kid, and the wife) that this was a 75 Mark bag (way more than I was willing to pay). But this was a status type situation, so I went along with this.
N-TV brought up this topic today.
So, there's this German bag company....Fond Of, and the German cartel office has now said the company has been price-fixing the school bags (suggesting for years)
Some of their bags were in the 200 Euro range ($240 roughly)....which I'd consider ridiculous in nature, but obviously some folks were willing to throw money at it. I guess I was lucky in the 1990s to got through this crap and only get screwed by 75 Marks then.
The fine? Around 2-million Euro. Anyone getting their money back from this deal? No.
My question....if you dragged out a 200 Euro bag and a 40 Euro bag....was there any real difference? I'm skeptical.
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