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.

Comments

Re:Price fixing by camera makers push me there.

[vlm]

you'd think that Canadians were some kind of alien organism with a metabolism based on cryogenic sulfur compounds for which drugs had to be specially formulated...

Canadians are not as fat, so on a mg of "whatever" vs Kg of body weight basis Canadian pharm should all be like 10 mg per tablet anytime you'd see 30 mg per tablet in the USA.

That said, if your doc tells you to take 30 mg of "whatever" per day, you're OK taking three Canadian "daily doses" of 10 mg each because 3 * 10 = the same 30 even though its "three daily doses per day".

Where this starts getting weird is OTC. I would theorize, and /. should research, that perhaps a Canadian "aspirin" tablet would be about half the size of a USA tablet because Canadian women are about half the size of US women for example so on thus providing a constant mg/Kg ratio.. Ditto vitamin pills and supplements.

I'll go first. I am in USA and I'm holding in my hand a box of advil ibuprofen tablets 200 mg per tablet. Now its getting late in the morning so if a canadian out there could put down his second molsen breakfast beer for a moment and shovel the snow to make a path to his or her medicine cabinet and report the size of a canadian advil / ibuprofen tablet I'd appreciate it. My hypothesis is that skinny canadian advil tablets are a mere 100 mg per tablet or maybe only 75 mg as opposed to the fatty american 200 mg tablets.