Aussie Consumers Say No To High Game Prices

[mad082]

The lower population in Australia might have a small effect on prices, but nowhere near the 50% to 200% increase in prices that you see here.

Anything more than 20% and they are pulling our leg.

The royalties might even be a factor in some small cases, but still a drop in the ocean.

We can both agree that the suppliers are the main problem here.

In that case the retailers association should be going after them instead of campaigning to make the government force the consumer to pay more just for the sake of it.

Of course the retailers are not going to do the 'right' thing because they would not want to risk the suppliers cutting them off.

Again the retailers are looking out for only themselves, so why shouldn't consumers do the same?

At the end of the day, Australians don't care that the retailers are crying wolf. And if your professional opinion is to be trusted, we have no reason to be worried. You said yourself it would take a lot to kill off the retailers in Australia.

So we can all go on buying our products at bargain prices from overseas and ignoring Mr Gerry Harvey crying over the fact that he can no longer charge ridiculous prices because nobody is willing to pay them.

:edit:

And my Westfields example was not the result of a new shopping center opening down the road. I was referring to Westfields Liverpool where on the 1st of July about 25% of the stores there closed (entire sections of the place are just a sea of wooden walls).

There is no new shopping mall anywhere near Liverpool, it was partially due to Westfields yearly rent rise and partly due to the fact that the lack of sales meant that a large number of stores there would struggle to pay it.

royalties can be a bit of a killer. a few years back one supplier i dealt with was closing down. one of the brands they were the distributor for was looking for a new distributor. they were asking $100,000 to become the distributor, before they took delivery of a single unit. now it wouldn't be such a big deal for a high turnover item, but they would probably only turn over 1000 units a year.

i also forgot to mention that in a lot of cases suppliers pay large sums of money to be the sole australian distributor of their brands. this doesn't help the situation as it means that to a certain extent they can control the prices, but it also means that they have to charge a bit more to recover that cost.

as for customers getting sick of retaillers crying for government assistance, why shouldn't they get it? the government props up so many other industries. look at the real estate and building industries. the government propped them up so much it created a bubble (which is now in the process of bursting). but the government propping the industry up meant the building companies were popping up left, right and centre. they certainly didn't need to do it but they did. retaillers get bugger all help (the government handouts a few years back did bugger all for retaillers).

and sure, customers should look out for themselves. my big gripe is that so many of the consumers who gripe about australian retaillers prices would also be the first to jump up and down about australian manufacturers moving operations overseas, or if a friend of family member lost their job because of downsizing, but wouldn't change their buying methods, even if it affected their own job. if people want to buy online then i can't stop them. i just want them to know that they are having an effect on the australian economy.

[S T A R 3 3]

ozgameshop.com - store from the UK.. free delivery to aus. may take 10-15 business days, but games are ridiculously cheap. and have saved $100's.

Mind u, if there is a game i want ASAP, i usually buy from JB or big w.

[Chappy]

royalties can be a bit of a killer. a few years back one supplier i dealt with was closing down. one of the brands they were the distributor for was looking for a new distributor. they were asking $100,000 to become the distributor, before they took delivery of a single unit. now it wouldn't be such a big deal for a high turnover item, but they would probably only turn over 1000 units a year.

i also forgot to mention that in a lot of cases suppliers pay large sums of money to be the sole australian distributor of their brands. this doesn't help the situation as it means that to a certain extent they can control the prices, but it also means that they have to charge a bit more to recover that cost.

If the royalties make it too expensive to sell here, maybe the retailers shouldn't bother selling the item?

Australia is a big enough market to make an overseas supplier think twice when its good stop being sold here.

as for customers getting sick of retaillers crying for government assistance, why shouldn't they get it? the government props up so many other industries. look at the real estate and building industries. the government propped them up so much it created a bubble (which is now in the process of bursting). but the government propping the industry up meant the building companies were popping up left, right and centre. they certainly didn't need to do it but they did. retaillers get bugger all help (the government handouts a few years back did bugger all for retaillers).

and sure, customers should look out for themselves. my big gripe is that so many of the consumers who gripe about australian retaillers prices would also be the first to jump up and down about australian manufacturers moving operations overseas, or if a friend of family member lost their job because of downsizing, but wouldn't change their buying methods, even if it affected their own job. if people want to buy online then i can't stop them. i just want them to know that they are having an effect on the australian economy.

Retailers are the ones who are responsible for there being so little Australian made products left. They started importing goods to save a buck decades ago.

It just seems a little rich that they are now complaining because consumers are doing the same thing as them.

If retailers were asking the government for ways to help them reduce their prices to compete, i would have no problem, but they are not.

They want the government to make overseas purchases more expensive, even if the method of doing so will be more costly than the money raised in the process.

[Chappy]

We now have an email address where we can send through examples of ripoff retail prices to the government for review.

Get cracking people!

"Bradbury is encouraging Australians to contact the commission with their examples at [email protected]. The final report will be sent to the government in November."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/aussie-tech-price-ripoffs-go-under-the-microscope-20110922-1km3r.html#ixzz1YdnaqnPM

[oweban]

Hah!

"To whomever it may concern:

http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs

THAT IS ALL, THANKYOU"

[EeLeYe]

^^^ BEST EXAMPLE EVER

So, this involves no manufacturing whatsoever, no shipping or handling. All it requires is an internet connection that you are already paying for, and yet oz prices are almost more than 3 times as much as other regions...

And us, as consumers, are stupid enough to actually pay these ridiculous prices!!!

[Damit]

Another good example is turbosmart

a guy I know just purchased all his turbosmart parts from the states as it was cheaper for him to purchase them and have them shipped over than it was to buy them here and it is an Australian made product that was shipped to the us and you can get it cheaper there than you can here and to get to the states it has all the extra shipping charges etc

[mad082]

not to be a stick in the mud, but there is also a section there for games that are cheaper in australia than elsewhere, but some of the prices of the aussie games vs US and UK are just plain rude. small price differences you could understand for differences in costs of housing/maintaining servers, etc, but then again, as i've said earlier, the cost of doing that in australia would be much higher than in other the US with a smaller market to service.

long story short, there is bugger all chance of anything being done. if anything was (talking more than just the software market), in the short term it would lead to job loses for both suppliers and retailers. retailers are struggling as it is, so reducing profits is going to make things worse.

[Chappy]

long story short, there is bugger all chance of anything being done. if anything was (talking more than just the software market), in the short term it would lead to job loses for both suppliers and retailers. retailers are struggling as it is, so reducing profits is going to make things worse.

And if nothing is done, people will continue to buy from overseas, bypassing GST and local retailers, also causing job losses.

[mad082]

yeah, lose lose situation. legislation isn't the answer though. it's the 'powers that be' that need to pull their head in, but the problem with multinational companies is that they don't care about what country the sale comes from because they get money either way, but they get more money in the countries with higher mark-up so for the people that won't buy online they are winning. the fact that it is then the retailler who gets all the bad press about prices rather than the wholesaler and manufacturer means that they are laughing all the way to the bank.

[oweban]

Yep, I agree. Something needs to be done about the back end; eg. distributors. Either tariffs need to be lowered or import taxes, so that distributors can give a fair price to the retailers, who in turn can give a fair price to the consumers. It's a big long chain of mishaps, and it's unfortunate that the retail sector cop all the abuse for it.

For some physical things, I won't buy online as I'd rather have a play with it beforehand and know that the store's there if I have issues, but for a lot of things where I know they'll work (eg. new shoes I bought, exact same as my old shoes, different colour), I got them for $88AUD delivered from the US vs. >$150AUD here. Given that I KNOW they'll fit perfectly, there's no way in hell I'll buy them around.

The flipside to that is I also recently bought Vibram Five Fingers; I needed to try these on in a store to get the right fit and as a result decided to buy a pair from the shop I was in for their help, but my future purchases of them will be online now I know my sizing.