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Prices Drive Australians To Grey Market For Hardware and Software
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government has been running an inquiry into why technology is so much more expensive to buy down under than in the U.S. In response to the price difference, many consumers are turning to the Internet to buy tech that is imported through unofficial channels at cheaper prices from the U.S. Not to miss out on sales, some retailers are starting to set up special websites that sell this way too. The so-called 'grey market' can save you cash, but could it cost you more in the long run? This article looks at some of the potential problems for people buying technology this way." A companion article examines some of the nitty-gritty of price differences between Australia and the U.S., including the observation that entry-level salaries skew higher in Australia.
I buy grey market Lenses from Canon. Because of the price fixing they do for the US market. I can save hundreds, and in some cases THOUSANDS by getting a grey market L series lens over the US market lens.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Read the 'article'. Was not impressed. Sounds like a press release from the 'white market' sellers telling Aussies that the 'grey market' is risky at best and could cost them twice as much.
This is so with any product purchased any where from anyone no matter which color they choose to paint their store.
Worldwide scrounging for the cheapest labor, juciest tax breaks, and laxest regulations for them, region coding and 'grey market' for you.
Low friction international capital markets for them, border and immigrations controls for you.
See, 'free trade' is awesome!
Companies set a suggested retail price in each market to maximize profit. (It depends on thngs like elasticity, incomes, availability of substitutes, etc.). You can't blame them for trying to make money. If you really want to save money you can always find a better deal on something, from so called grey markets, etc. But there is nearly always a trade off in your time, or lack of warranty, or some other factor. It reminds me of when I used to buy "international editions" of textbooks from Singapore. They were much cheaper than the books in our college bookstore, but I had to spend time finding them online and sometimes the homework problems would be different and I'd get screwed. Everyone--retailers, wholesalers, and consumers--is just finding their own trade-off to try to maximize their own utility. Basic Economics.
Companies like Newegg and Amazon must employ extra staff to invert the contents of all the packages to be sent to the Australian market. It's hard to have robots do this because of the sheer variety of size and contents. Most electronics are made in the northern hemisphere also to be sold there, so are naturally constructed rightside-up for that market. Employing so many people to flip the products over costs money, which is naturally passed on to customers in that market.
It sucks for our AU friends, but it's the natural cost of being in such a small niche market.
Traveled there for work over the years and checked out the computer stores while I was down there. Everything was more expensive by a fair margin, enough to put me in shock. Not just computers either, food, clothes, household goods etc.
Talking to the locals they got in the habit of buying from the US and hoping the warranty wasn't needed. Massive problem and I'm surprised they are finally doing something about it.
I still want a Ute though. Was very disappointed when Pontiac got axed right before they were going to import 500 of them....
In Argentina our goverment is the one blocking the import of technology. Until recently, the normal case was to pay twice the price for the same product in USA.
For example, my Dell XPS laptop used to cost 700 dollars on Dell USA. The same machine in Dell Argentina costed me 1400 dollars. Today, Dell Argentina is no longer selling laptops.
I'd say until recently because since a few months ago the customs office has been blocking the entry of most imported products. Today, even getting some medical supplies can be problematic for hospitals.
I did that for years on mobile phones in the US. That was more based on availability versus prices.
I imagine part of the reason at the moment is that the Australian dollar is much higher than it has been traditionally. Canada has had the same issue, though I know in our case there has always been additional markup, and the UK has often been 50% more expensive.
"Grey Market" used to mean refurbished product, especially the warranty-return product which either worked to begin with (brought back to retailer out of "buyers remorse") or was simply repaired or upgraded. As sales became more global, Corporations negotiated different warranty expectations on new products in different countries, so goods sold in a country with lower consumer warranty guarantees were cheaper, and might find themselves transported to where they were covered by stricter warranty (increasing risk to the manufacturer if the product was faulty).
Today, few of the products sold are actually made by the Corporation whose name is on the warranty. Factories like Taiwanese-owned Han Hoi (Foxconn) churn out product not just for Apple, but for defunct brand names like "Polaroid". The term "grey market" today is applied (by groups like Anti Gray Market Alliance) to patent claim products and plain old "used" sales. The term "grey market" as used in the article is so general that it is really meaningless. Even the product you buy from a "factory direct" website may be the exact same good as the one you buy with another corporation's name on it, entirely. How "grey" is that?
Gently reply
The yen is stronger then US dollars. It's the same reason Honda/ Toyota is moving most of their manufacturing to the US (so it can sell it to US markets) instead of assembling it in Japan and then importing it over to the US. If the latter is the case, the price would be considerably higher (like your L-lenses).
I have rellies from Oz who when they visit the US stock up on hand and construction tools. Last time they were here they loaded up a suitcase with (among other things) a nail gun and as many of the brads as they could carry. They were really helped out by the fact that their 5 year old son was entitled to the full luggage allowance when flying. You don't do things like that unless it is worth your while.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The owners of capital shop worldwide for the best deals in low wages with the loosest regulations and more tax breaks.
I'll do the same and shop where to price is better.
Three aspects of Australia that make everything more expensive: Thing 1: Densely populated areas are clustered most often far away from each other, meaning it costs more to get products to a dense consumer bases. Thing 2: We do not have a source of cheap labor in Australia. Trade workers will hardly roll out of bed for less than a grand a day. Thing 3: Large global interests take advantage of this real economic situation to create a false economy, reasoning that..."Hey, everything else is more expensive...we're just keeping up with traffic." Microsoft does this. A Volume license key costing 175.00 US will cost over 350.00 AU....for no reason other than tangible items are also more expensive and people expect to pay marginally more. These organizations are not helping our situation. Nevermind how you color the market. People will pay the least amount possible for any given product as long as the consumer surplus remains the same. speak wit yo wallet
I can't get someone to step me through a bunch of useless processes, only to tell me that they can't help me and that whatever part I need isn't covered?
All the arguments in the article are equally valid for non-imported items. Even if you buy goods through "proper" channels there is no reason to expect there to be a repair center in your own country anyway. Unless you are talking about NTSC vs PAL then what kinds of "technical incompatibility" might you encounter. Even region coding is not a technical incompatibility but a legal one. Aren't pretty much all the retailer warranty arguments completely invalidated by the fact that the manufacturer will almost always have a longer warranty than the retailer?
You mean when you artificially jack up prices, people will try to find a way around it?
I'm shocked.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
There a number of factors that lead to price differentials between countries.
1. Tax differences - Aussie GST is 10%. No US state has a sales tax that high. Aussie prices are quoted with tax included. US prices are not.
2. Labor costs- US retail workers are paid less
3. Size of the market - Costs in the US can be spread over a much larger customer base than in Australia.
4. Shipping costs - Shipping to Australia is more expensive than to a US address, even from Asia!
5. Import duties differences
6. Copyright and patent licensing fees differences
There may be others.
A lot of electronics in Mexico are 20-50% more expensive compared to the USA. The Apple MBP is 500 USD more expensive, for example. And then there is the warranty bullshit. Yesterday I bought a SHDC memory card with, according to the packaging, 5 years of (limited) warranty. Upon opening one finds a small paper that "replaces all warranties" and gives only 90 days. I am not sure about the legality of this, and if it actually "replaces" the warranty. When I asked around a bit, Western Digital claimed that if I buy an external disk with 3 years of warranty I have 3 years of warranty, no matter what additional paper, added by the importer states. Moreover, warranty here often seems to be split in 3 parts: first period with the shop that sold the goods, next period with the importer, and finally one has to turn to the manufacturer. Sounds all nice, but when recently my 2 month old router kept losing its connection I wanted it replaced. The sales person and a manager did their utmost best to try to send me away and insisted that I contact Cisco so they could check the issue remotely, via the Internet. After 40 minutes I stated that I wanted a new router within 5 minutes or else the police would be called. And that did finally the trick.
On one hand I can understand the price difference; the market is smaller and stock sells very slow. If something has to be ordered it's not uncommon to have to pay 50% ahead, and no money back when it's not what one wants (one gets "electronic money" or a raincheck which has to be used within the same shop within a short amount of time). But on the other hand it is painful to have and to pay 50-60% more for a Nikon camera lens (for example) and have only 1 year of warranty (in the USA one gets 3+ years or so on the same lens).
And then there is the "made for Latin America" thing.... I really have the feeling that some electronics are made with way less quality compared to similar products in the USA just because the manufacturers can get away with it. And while there is a kind of consumer protection organization in Mexico (PROFECO) in my experience it's a bit of a hit and miss besides that it eats up a lot of time (most people here probably don't even bother).
Perl Programmer for hire
The exchange rate is part of it but locked down distribution channels are the larger part.
A while ago, one US dollar was worth 1.7 Australian dollars. So something worth US$50 in a US store would be put on shelves here for AU$85. And then the exchange rate changed. One US dollar was worth one AU dollar. But things don't sell for their cost, they sell for as much as the seller can get and that's the pricing Australian consumers were used to. So that US$50 item would still be sold for AU$85 and someone would pocket the AU$35 difference.
The second part of this is distribution channel lockdown. Companies producing goods make deals with their US distributors to force those distributors to refuse to sell to Australian buyers. That leaves Australians and Australian retailers forced to buy from the designated Australian distributor at inflated prices.
What the grey market does is break that distribution lock. That's all. Some US citizen buys goods in the US from the US distribution channel, pays the US price, ships them over and sells them in Australia for far less than the authorised Australian distributor charges Australian retailers. If it wasn't for the locked down distribution, Australian retailers would skip the authorised Australian distributor and buy from a US distributor at US prices.
Another reason Australians are complaining is, with Internet sales, people nowdays can *see* the prices being charged elsewhere. 15 years ago, you'd have no idea what something sold for in another country. Now, we see Skyrim appear on Steam for US$50 for US gamers and US$90 for Australian gamers.
Yes, we get charged US dollars on Steam. 90 of them instead of 50, because the US Steam site sees I have an Australian IP address. And you have to send the packets much harder to make sure they get all the way across the ocean, you know? There's sites where you can order a game and they'll go to their local retailer, buy the game, open the box and then email you the Steam key. You can type it in your Steam client and download the game. Absolutely ridiculous.
Here's an extreme example:
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (16GB, Deep Grey)
Amazon US: $499.99
Amazon DE: EUR 716,77 ($890.87)
Note that the German price include VAT.
It's the tax we non-USians must pay to help support the lifestyle in the US.
Here in Sweden it's not just a matter of pricing but also with delayed releases since manufacturers want to sell localized products.
What this means is that even if I'm fine with an English-language version of a product (or in many cases, Swedish-language version with a quickstart pamphlet in English) no one is selling the product because they hold off on introducing it to the Swedish market until the initial rush for the product in English-language markets is over.
Case in point, the Nexus 7 tablet. No company in the US will sell it directly to Swedish customers, Asus has announced they're going to start selling it in october(!) and the only way to get one right now is through some grey import channel (have it shipped via some address in the US/UK or from some small fly-by-night company that caters to early adopters).
It used to be that even software suffered from this, many older Swedish gamers will remember having to wait for months while games were translated to German, French and Spanish before being released to the Swedish market (with most Swedish gamers playing games with the language set to English with a handful using Swedish if its available).
I'm all in favor telling corporations they can have their precious "free" trade only if the same freedoms are given to everyone, no "We own the trademark so you can't import our product from a market we give a fuck about and sell it on a market we don't care about" crap, if you're selling it anywhere then anyone should be free to ship it to somewhere else and sell it there as well.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Solidworks, an engineering CAD and analysis package, was nearly twice as much in Australia as in US a few years ago (not peanuts, close to AUD $20k vs around US $10k for full analysis package) . Very hard to understand reason. US engineering salaries were about he same as Oz, so this imposes significantly higher cost of business for any Australian corporation trying to compete internationally. I would have expected similar prices in countries with similar wage costs.
Actually worth hopping on a plane, buying it and installing from a reseller in the US and then getting a US proxy for updates and servicing.
Governments of the abused customers should specifically legislate to make the laws that support such predatory pricing illegal regardless of copyright lobby, because our businesses have to compete with the countries that get the advantage of cheaper prices.
They wanted globalisation and they got it. There's two sides to the coin (thank fucking god). Here in Aus we do have a good base wage which justifies some of the extra cost, but common opinion is that we are being fairly gouged on top of that. If we can ship things OS for cheaper then its within our rights to do so, and I regularly do so these days. If the market cant bear it then it will have to adjust. Its economics, not rocket science.
Although there is an unjustifiable disparity for the common items they examined, it's even worse for specialist equipment.
E.g. I would like to purchase a large format printer to be able to print and sell my photographs. The price difference between the US and Australia is over 100% !
B and H - $1,575.00
computeronline.com.au - $3645.00 inc GST
camerapro.net.au - $3,156.00 [Includes GST]
Although Australia is a smaller market than the US, and so there are higher stock costs and lower turnover, having something cost more than twice as much here as it does in the US is just ridiculous.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
Here in CH we have a similar or perhaps even worse situation. Anything we buy comes at a premium price for no apparent reason. Sure, we get the best products available -as most developed countries do- but service can be quite rough. As procedures are in place and mostly high end products are sold, there are very few defects and/or dissatisfied customers. When something breaks then the CH business are either inexperienced in dealing with such cases or only see their side of the coin and complain about loosing money. No kidding.
I accept 10 to 15% higher prices for luxury goods in CH. Anything above that triggers an order in DE, UK or US with me or a visit to DE.
The Swiss then tend to wine about Swiss business lost. Sure, the boys from the import cartels that mainly scratch their bottoms and push boxes will not get my money that easily.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
...is that hard? Nah. Not hard at all. Been doing it for years. On top of that, show up at a Sydney computer wholesaler (like at Capitol), tell 'em you're buying via ABN, and voila: you've got cheap. Is that hard?
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
The conservative argument against universal health care is pretty simple. If it's paid for by taxes, the middle to upper class pay significantly more than everyone else for the same service. And those people don't like doing that.
Personally, i'm on the fence about the issue. I definitely see the benefits of a simple, efficient, single payer system. And I also feel it's important that everyone has access to affordable health care. However, I do find it annoying that a huge percentage of the population pays little to no taxes but expect more and more free services from the government. I think health care is a personal responsibility that everyone needs to budget for. Similar to buying groceries or paying rent (extreme poverty cases aside), everyone has to pay. I see far too many poor people buying iPhones and $100 data plans, yet claim they cannot afford health insurance.
As usual you can blame the unions. Once you factor in the outrageous demands from these scumbags why would you be surprised that your stuff costs a LOT more? You want cheap stuff, get rid of your communists, mates.
Books are a sore spot for me. Forever we have always had on the jacket 11.99USA/26.99CAN and it really pisses me off.
Sure in the past they could argue about there being a currancy differeance. However how long has the Canadian dollar been at par or better?
Sure they could argue a lag in distrabution, etc... but they still do this for magizines...
It really is silly.
The other thing is electronics? Why? Its not like they produce them... They are all shiped from Thailand, China, Taiwan, etc... Smaller market, distrabution centers, maybe but still I don't see it.
While the big name retail stores in Australia are nearly always really expensive, when you shop around a bit you can normally find pretty cheap places. My local computer store for example got $2333AU all up for the software category on the article, where their US shop got $2120 and their AU shop got $3183 - and thats with me including the price of Project 2010 standard from Microsoft's AU site rather than my shop, because they only provided 2010 Pro there. So while it's definately more expensive when you go to retail stores and the like, you can nearly always find good prices shopping around a bit.
Same for Brazil... most electronics here are massively overpriced if compared with the USA or Europe. It's easy to see with Apple products and smartphones/tablets.
Bad logistics, taxes, a market willing to pay for overpriced products etc...
I do wonder how much a backwards-spinning toilet costs.
I looked at the dosage chart on my children's ibuprofen syrup recently and found that the recommended dose for a 12-yr-old was the same as the extra-strength pills for an adult (400mg every 6-8 hrs). For my kids old enough to swallow pills I'll just figure out the dose they need and give it to them in tablets.
For what it's worth, I've never seen the point in buying prescription-strength pills for ibuprofen. I've been on 800mg doses of ibuprofen before, and it was much cheaper to just take 4x 200mg tablets each dose rather than paying for the 800mg tablets. I'm also curious why the dosage-by-weight tables seem to assume that everyone over 100lbs needs the same dose. I doubt that my 100lb daughter, my 150lb wife, and my 300lb neighbor would get the same benefit from 400mg...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
Dude in San Francisco buy 50$ game, with amazon shop credits, and pay 20$.
Dude in Sydney pay 150$ for the game.
Dude in Sydney get the exact same version, binary exact version.
Fuck regional pricing, fuck them in the ass!.
-Woof woof woof!
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/goodgame/episodes/date_2012_Tuesday21August2012.htm (today's episode) on gaming.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Please, before ever posting on this again, learn about the following:
-Royalty
-The Feudal System
-The Catholic Church ca 1520 especially The Vatican Bank and Indulgence Selling
-International Banking (Niall Ferguson has a great book, The Ascent of Money. You desperately need to read this.)
And the essential problem that Occupy has is that they don't understand that organized whining isn't any more effective than disorganized whining. You have to work to change things - and therein lies the seeds of their failure.
.. you will run into problems with customs because they consider original equipment e.g. from Nikon Japan a "grey import" and trademark violation and confiscate it and fine you. Trademarks for Asia/Japan are often held by a different company than the same trademark for Europe. This may not necessarily hold up in court (esp. ECJ), but that doesn't stop customs from fucking people over and fining them.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
(comparison shopping engines) I've looked at a few products now and they seem generally much cheaper in Australia than in the EU, so the article is probably just based on sloppy research.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
In Hawaii: the "island price" for most goods (eg, at Walmart or Home Depot) is 20% higher, but "specialty" items are 200-300%.
Local retailers complain that the sales-tax exemption gives Amazon an "unfair advantage", which is ironic when those same retails charge twice the price.
Funny how "they" need the "market freedom" to charge everyone as much as possible, but when individuals do it, they're creating a "grey market" and "cheating vendors out of their profits".
Instead of paying for software, use GNU or BDS F/LOSS software. No more MS-Windows, MS-Office, OSX, Antivirus ... this works in business, since there is a F/LOSS counterpart for the most commonly wanted software. Obviously there is some software that is not available, but you'll greatly reduce the dependence on paid software this way.
Whatever you do, don't send any money to Oracle or Adobe. There are definitely better alternatives for almost everyone, except 0.1% of businesses.
Gaming is a different issue, but that is "entertainment", not required.
I don't have any answer for the hardware issues. I've been burned with aftermarket hardware warranties too. EMC and Cisco refuse to sell software for their equipment when purchased used from a different customer. Fortunately, IBM was happy to provide $200K trade in on a new HDS frame. That doesn't help most mid-small-home businesses.
On their site you could choose what currenty to pay in - the conversion to Australian $ added around 40% to the price. What stung was at the time the Australian dollar was stronger than the US$, so in theory the price should have dropped.
I actually phoned up and queried why - the lady at the other end told me that it was due to the exchange rates when they set the price and not the rate at that point in time. However that would only have been the case if they had set the price several years previously.
Now they have fixed the problem by not letting you chose the currency - they force you to pay their inflated Australian prices, even though all you are buying is a license key.
It sure makes those US hosted proxy services look attractive.
An example that has been pissing me off for weeks. A Dell M4700, with a 2.6GHz i7-3720QM, 8Gb RAM, 500 Gb HDD, IPS 1920x1080 display, 3 yr warranty.
From www.dell.com.au: AUD$3600.
From www.dell.com: $1550.
Surely they can't be serious. That's 230% more for the same thing.
Following is a link to a major Chinese internet shopping mall run very similar to Amazon in America. I have been buying all sorts of electronic goodies here. Caveat: there is usually NO documentation shipped with the product. Be able to determine from the vendors web page if this is the item you want before you buy. Do not expect any technical support. Once in a while I do get a disappointment, so buy a sample or two first.
Import it yourself!
If you make lots of prototypes, as I do, you will find all sorts of subassemblies of other stuff here you can adapt to what you want. At a fraction of industrial catalog price. Arduino lovers take note.
Fer cryin' out loud, don't pay a big markup to someone else to visit this site for you.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
US $70 AU $210 for an email with 20 characters in it
Australia and New Zealand are smaller countries and are also isolated. Plus, they probably have much better social services, like health-care, decent public transportation, etc, which all get their money from taxes. Like with gas prices, everyone basically buys the oil from the same people, at about the same price, and it's traded on the world-market. It's the local taxes and government subsidies that can make a gallon cost $4 in the US and then $8 in the EU.
Australia has been from suffering Discriminatory Pricing Practices for as long as I can remember. A DVD, CD, Cassette Tape Music all cost more in Australia than in the United States. This has now flowed into a range of other products with Vendors claiming everything from smaller market costs to higher cost of shipping.
Given that much of the product in question is either delivered electronically (iTunes, Software, eBooks etc...) or physically for hardware manufactured in South East Asia (shipping to Australia is much cheaper) (DELL, HP and virtually every other tech manufacturer) there really is little excuse for charging more.
Whilst I am happy the Australian Government is taking an interest in this issue, I don't understand why there is an enquiry. As this is (I am not a lawyer) appears to be covered by the Racial Discrimination Act (http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2012C00236) Section 13 states:
"It is unlawful for a person who supplies goods or services to the public or to any section of the public:
(a) to refuse or fail on demand to supply those goods or services to another person; or
(b) to refuse or fail on demand to supply those goods or services to another person except on less favourable terms or conditions than those upon or subject to which he or she would otherwise supply those goods or services;
by reason of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of that other person or of any relative or associate of that other person."
My interpretation of this is that Apple is breaching the Racial Discrimination Act by selling online music to Australians at a higher cost than to Americans. Discriminaiton based on our national origin.
I should be able to send yours to Hong Kong.
Here in New Zealand parallel importing used to be illegal - and when it was allowed, it absolutely crushed prices. I can remember buying a $300 parallel imported camera that would've cost $500 through ''official'' channels. Importers soon wisen their prices and now there is little of the way of parallel importing in the local market.
The high costs on some items is down to low volume and lack of competition in a smaller market (I was able to buy a Blu-ray player at over 60% off at a price 40% higher than what I'd paid for it in the US). Australia has much the same issue - 23m people but an island with little retail channel diversity.
NZ and Australia also have GST/VAT taxes on sales which make things more expensive.
We should all refuse to recognise the concept ot the "Grey Market".
We should just ask the following questions...
Did you buy it or steal it?
Was it legally bought all through the supply chain or was it stolen?
Has it been misused or damaged?
If it is away from where you bought it, did you know that you have to pay shipping for warranty actions?
If it has been stolen, this is a police matter. Otherwise, it is legal. This is black and white...
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I am an Australian, and I buy a lot of computer and photographic hardware and software on-line because it is much cheaper. I try to avoid buying from the USA because the postage charges are usually way over the top, even though the reliability and speed of the USPS is the worst that I have encountered. It is much better to buy from Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan, or even China.
I have learned to ignore the guarantee problem. Modern electronics tends to either die during the first use, or last a reasonable life time. The Chinese sellers can be tricky negotiators, but most of them are honest and will replace a genuinely faulty product that they have sold you. They are highly competitive and hate bad feedback. Often they do not know their product, or speak much English. If you ask them a question about some detail claim in their ad, they will usually promptly give you a very polite but entirely unhelpful answer. I try to avoid the well known brands because they generally cost more, are older designs, and often have restrictions built in that are not in my interest (like DVD Region codes). The pure no name or generic Chinese made items are usually better value.
I agree with the Zurei about the reasons Australians pay more. I hope those rip-off distributors lose all their business to on-line direct importing. We don't need them now.
The multinationals have artificially increased the price of goods coming to Australia for years by;
1. Enforcing rights management and getting monopolies which allow them to overcharge.
2. Lately DRM has been a sledgehammer to try and maintain this cosy overcharge. Any attempts at parallel imports are fought tooth and nail with the same fallacious arguments as the drug companies & cigarette companies use. No warranty, no standards,
3. Governments don't care. Almost guarantee this inquiry will get no-where.
4. Local retailers add to the issue by taking the overpriced imports from wholesalers / manufacturers and adding an overly large markup especially in on line retailing, the 10% GST is a minor component but they try and justify the same price as at bricks & mortar stores by claiming GST cost. Blaming the customer is easier than fighting the monopolies.
How Amazon can ship a book from the US to Australia , single unit not bulk so shipping cost higher , and sell it for half the cheapest on line book sourced here and 70% cheaper than the cheapest bookstore is beyond me. Likewise electronics etc.
Yes economies of scale make it cheaper to make & sell in the US etc but not that much. Most local manufacturing of these items have been outsourced to China years ago so the economy of scale isn't as significant as they claim.
Basically until the US government realise the real pirates are the multinational companies clamoring for DRM nothing will change. That won't happen in my lifetime.
Wolja Future Tombstone: Shit happened then I died
metrix007/Boagreus "goes down" instantly vs. APK -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3058625&cid=41055453 and the film clip portraying your instant defeat @ the hands of A Killeus son of Peleus (APK) -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BiLCJxpqi4
metrix007/Boagreus "goes down" instantly vs. APK -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3058625&cid=41055453 and the film clip portraying your instant defeat @ the hands of A Killeus son of Peleus (APK) -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BiLCJxpqi4
metrix007/Boagreus "goes down" instantly vs. APK -> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3058625&cid=41055453 and the film clip portraying your instant defeat @ the hands of A Killeus son of Peleus (APK) -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BiLCJxpqi4