I want to shop local, but...

Where is the incentive to buy locally when it will cost me £516 to buy a brand new HTC One M9 mobile phone from Airtel-Vodafone, £503.80 from JT and £499 from Sure but just £413.25 from Amazon, after the UK VAT has rightfully been deducted at the checkout.

Either the three telecommunications networks in Guernsey have failed to remove the VAT in their pricing or their mark-ups are greedily high. This is unacceptable.

Unless prices in Guernsey are reasonably adjusted so that all VAT is removed and mark-ups are kept to a sustainable percentage, I will not put a single penny of my hard-earned money back into Guernsey's economy unless forcibly made to.

This genuinely breaks my heart because I love Guernsey. Very much so. I was born and raised here and I can remember a time when almost everything was cheaper here than in the UK. Sadly, this is now not the case and it's a shame too because this was also something I used to boast about to friends in the UK. Not any more.

CHRIS HARVEY,

chris.harvey@email.com

Editor's footnote: Tamara O'Brien, Deputy MD at JT Guernsey replies:

'Firstly we would like to thank Mr Harvey for bringing this issue to our attention.

We regularly review our prices to make sure that they are as low as they can be, and this is all useful information.

To deal with the point raised specifically, we can confirm that the JT price does not include VAT.

But I'm afraid Mr Harvey is not comparing like-with-like when he sets high street prices in Guernsey against those available on Amazon.

The differences are as follows:

1. Amazon sells hundreds of thousands of different products every day of the year, and consequently can buy their products to sell at far, far lower prices than any local company like JT.

To give some idea of the scale of Amazon, its UK warehouses alone would cover the whole of Forest parish.

Globally, its warehouses would cover more than half of Guernsey. That scale gives Amazon buying power that local firms cannot compete with.

2. Another way Amazon is able to keep its prices low is that it doesn't have shop staff, or even the rental on a high street shop, to pay for. Local companies such as JT work on a very different basis, one which offers face-to-face customer service, albeit with a higher cost.

Basically, the business model of a major global online retailer like Amazon, is totally different from that of a local shop.

While we are always happy to receive feedback from our customers should they not feel content with any element of our service, we would hope not to be compared to the world's largest online retailer, but considered, as a whole, on the service we provide.

We all love living and working in Guernsey, but for the reasons given, price alone is always going to be a very tough comparison when you set a local shop against Amazon.'

Mike Fawkner-Corbett, head of product at Sure, replies: 'Sure tries to be as competitive as possible with the pricing of our handsets and we're pleased to be the cheapest on the island in the particular example your reader uses, of the HTC One M9.

As the volume of handsets we purchase is so much smaller than the mass suppliers in the UK, it isn't always possible to compete on price. However, many of our handset prices are significantly reduced if bought in conjunction with one of our great value pay monthly plans.

We pride ourselves on the great personalised advice we give prior to buying from us and high quality aftercare, which we believe, are valuable reasons for buying your handset locally.'

Airtel did not respond to a request for comment.