That's the nature of business. They aren't a charity.
No, but then there is business and some of what Hornby have been doing. The whole pre-order situation is the most egregious. The shops take pre-orders, Hornby introduce their tier system, the shops have to cancel pre-orders, suddenly the only place to get your loco from is direct from Hornby at their full RRP (which as far as I can find no shops ever charge), what a shock! The repeated use of old, inaccurate or downright incorrect molds for top dollar models.
Hornby feel they can charge high prices as a lot of their customers think they are the only supplier of model railways; it's essentially a tax on not doing price research (or ignorance), and as long as people keep paying it, they will keep charging it.
Until people just stop paying it. The W1 fiasco could be a turning point. If Hornby want to charge crazy money then they need to produce an excellent product. Not a model which has arrived broken and with a trailing bogie that looks like belongs on a BRIO set. How many people over the last 18 months thought about getting into the hobby, googled "model railways", ended up on Hornby's website, seen £200+ models and thrown the idea in the bin?
I model European N but keep an eye on the UK market. Its come to a miserable point where I saw a model I've been waiting for finally get its price (a 4 car Kato EMU) and be genuinely shocked that its only £175. In the interest of fair comparison, looking at Arnold products on the Hornby website, they want £269.50 for a 3 car RENFE DMU meanwhile Piko want £249 for a 4 car EMU and Fleischmann want £257 for a close coupled, functional tilt (in N scale!) ICE T. Hornby prices just don't match what other people are doing.
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£362 for two HST power cars. Not sound fitted, not even DCC fitted. No coaches (£44 each by the way). How on Earth can anyone even start to justify that!?
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