You'll get the most bang for your buck by mail-ordering your gizmos direct from the USA.
The last story we wrote about buying stuff directly from the US got a strong response. A very strong response. Some readers thought we were being un-Australian by encouraging people to spend their money offshore, which would inevitably cost Australian retail jobs.
Others were disgusted at how badly we were being ripped off for common pieces of tech.
We're revisiting the issue because it continues to be a sore point for Australian consumers, but also because some retailers are getting their act together and making their pricing more reasonable, showing that it's not impossible to deliver equitable prices to Australians.
For example, we discovered that it was cheaper to buy HP 128A colour toner in Australia than in the US. A set of four cartridges (C/M/Y/B) costs only $260.69 delivered from MegaBuy, but the cheapest price we could find in the USA, including delivery to Australia, was US$249.99 plus postage, for a total of $327.09 (Express-Inks).
Many companies are also starting to set up 'virtual' shop in Australia, with an Australian phone number for customer service, Australian warranty arrangements, but no actual physical presence.
For example, Simply Electronics is a company that is listed in Australian price search engines like Shopbot and MyShopping.com.au, but actually ships everything into Australia from Hong Kong.
A representative told APC that in case of any warranty issues, Simply Electronics pays the cost of picking up the item and getting it fixed by a qualified repairer. All prices listed on the site also include GST, which is pre-paid to customs.
This model can be cheaper than importing the goods yourself. For example, a high-end Denon AVR-4311 home theatre receiver costs $2,299 delivered anywhere in Australia with Simply Audio, but the best price we could find to directly import it from the US was $2,499, including postage and GST.
A lot of the price comparisons Australians make with US prices are actually unrealistic -- we often look at the Australian RRP (which is always unrealistically inflated) and compare it to the US selling price. In order to determine the real best deal, you should hunt for the very best price you can find in Australia and then compare it to the best price available in the US or UK. You'll also need to take into account postage (for both Australian and international stores), any compulsory insurance and GST payable on items worth more than $1,000.
An increasingly common trick to stop consumers price shopping in the global market is to create country-specific model numbers. For example, Pioneer's high-end audio receiver is called the SC-57 in USA, but in Australia, it's called the SC-LX85.
Manufacturers will angrily defend these policies, saying the Australian models are customised for the Australian market (for example, in the case of the SC-LX85, it has had the 'elite' logo removed from the front and the display panel lighting colour changed from amber to white. The Australian model has had some US-specific services like Sirius and Rhapsody disabled too).
Sometimes there are important localisations made -- for example, DAB digital radios sold in the UK are totally incompatible with the DAB+ broadcasting standard used in Australia. Likewise, anything that has a TV tuner will be set up to use ATSC in the USA, whereas in Australia we use DVB-T, a totally different standard.
However, in many cases, the price difference makes any minor incompatibilities completely worthwhile, as in the case of the Pioneer receiver.
While researching for this article, some of the best deals we spotted were 47% off a Sony XAV-622, 44% off an OPPO BDP-93 Blu-ray player and 44% off the aforementioned Pioneer SC-LX85, with more moderate discounts on gear like iPhones, Kindles and Android phones.
Also worth noting is that more and more web sites are offering to 'conveniently' sell you stuff converted from US into Australian dollars. Physical retailers like Amazon, online shareware retailers like Digital River, eSellerate and Kagi and payment processors like PayPal all do it.
Supposedly, it allows you to see the true cost of the item before purchasing and avoid international transaction fees on your credit card.
But in truth, the reason companies are doing it is they can quietly skim a bit more profit off the purchase in the form of a poorer exchange rate than you might get from your bank.
Usually it's better value just to pay in US dollars. You'll still have to pay some credit card fees on top of that -- typically 1.5-3% for a foreign transaction (You can see all the fees compared
here.) However, there are two cards that charge no fees at all for foreign currency exchange: the GE 28 Degrees Mastercard and NAB Gold Banking Visa Debit.
