Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s American site | Hacker News Reader

Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s American site

techcrunch.com

52 pointscalliethrone41 comments

"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise." -- Donald Horne

(1964)

still as true today as it was back then. Although perhaps the leaders are worse today (e.g. the NBN fiasco)

How dare Australia make Jeff Bezos follow the law and stop Amazon from undercutting local competition!

At least they clearly know. Compare to frustrations with shipping from US to Europe where you'll never know till checkout whether delivery is possible or not.

cries in swiss

I got a first generation ROG Swift 1440p 144hz G-Sync monitor about 4 years ago. It had been constantly sold out in the US from every retailer. So I found one on UK Amazon. Sure, it took a little longer to get here, but I think it got here in 3-4 vs 1-2. Since it came with the British power plug, I had to get a different cable, but other than that, it was fine.

I don't understand the issue as long as you're paying for the shipping.

Not every website ships internationally, and most only tells you that you can't ship to EU once you reach the shipment page (after giving your billing details).

It saddens me a bit that this may become the new norm for the internet.

This may become? Hasn't it always been like this for most commercial companies and sites?

"Video not available in your country". "Google Nexus is not available for your country, check back soon". google.com -> google.ro (or whatever).

I guess most Americans haven't noticed it because they haven't needed stuff from abroad...

I've occasionally run across European online retailers while looking to buy something online and sometimes the prices are even attractive before you see what the shipping costs. They've never flat out told me "You can't order from here because you're in the US."

Cell phones and videos have service and licensing problems that physical goods don't run into, so geographic limits on those is less surprising.

Its not that you "can't order from amazon".

Its that there's a geo-blocked/redirected domain which australians will be shown which adjusts prices and collect sales tax.

As an Australian, being geoblocked and having prices dynamically changed/adjusted based upon my IP address is extremely old-hat since half the internet already does it...GST or not...

Edit: although, as an australian, there ARE a whole host of services/content we're not supposed to be able to see because we're australian due to blocking in our country. Its why so many of us use VPN's and dropship services and the like...

Moving to Australia soon, what's the blocking like?

Not too bad now but after 1 July then will probably be a lot worse

> Cell phones and videos have service and licensing problems that physical goods don't run into, so geographic limits on those is less surprising.

My personal favorite is when there is geo-restricted licensing on some content, and the content isn't available in my region so I effectively can't buy something even though I want to. That I frequently have to find an obscure media seller in a foreign country, without enforced geo-restrictions to pay is asinine.

They've never flat out told me "You can't order from here because you're in the US."

I've been told that, for something as simple as an attached room for an RV/caravan awning. Fiamma product, can't find it in the U. S. "Shipping costs be damned, send me one of those!" And they flat out said they wouldn't. Prolly customs paperwork or something, that they didn't want to do (or didn't know how).

Yes :(.

$59.50 (£44.75) for Levi.com Jeans in US £85.50 from the "Levi.com UK" branded store.

In the early days, when we had double the exchange on the dollar, I used to buy everything from the US, and the shipping prices were pennies. It used to be exciting to have different markets to browse.

In 2002 a novel came out in the UK. I priced on amazon.com and it was only available at ca. $100 from people who had probably read it on the plane back from UK. I priced it at amazon.co.uk and bought it. It was about $60 or $70 on my doorstep. Not a great price, because it was probably much less when it got expurgated and published in the US. But much less than $100.

What part of companies complying with local tax law saddens you?

If Amazon, or anyone else for that matter, wants access to the Australian market then they need to abide by the tax regulations as dictated by Australia. If it's the tax itself that considered off putting, that's up to Australians to decide (i.e. local protectionism / profit capture v.s. lower prices and higher global imports).

I grew up in Canada and in the 70's and 80's when I ordered something from the US or elsewhere, it would be shipped to me and I would get a notice in the mail that a package was waiting for me along with the amount of taxes that I owed. That's a nice way to handle it because I could order from anywhere in the world and every small vendor across the planet didn't need to understand Canadian tax codes. I suspect if all those companies had to collect and remit taxes to the Canadian government, they would have just refused to ship there. That's the part that would sadden me.

I was amazed with the Aussie approach to implementing this as putting it on the merchants who are unlikely to be AU tax payers is impossible. It is designed to be unenforceable.

We still have your exact system in the UK (and rest of EU?) it kills my desire to import unless the price is vastly different. Anything from non-EU countries above £15 gets hit with 20% VAT & an admin fee (£8 I think!).

https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty

It saddens you that all retailers selling to customers in the same place have the same tax collection rules applied to them?

But instead of applying the tax rules they simply decided to not sell to Australia anymore. I believe OP is sad about the accelerating move to a more fragmented internet.

Well, Amazon is taking their ball and going home because they're not happy about the tax law. They threatened to do similar in Seattle. I suppose this episode is an answer when people ask in what way Amazon enjoys monopoly power.

Well, if you look, for example computers parts in Germany with geizhals.de, seems like the shops' majority will deliver products only inland. I've read something about complications with different VAT rates between European countries, IIRC if they differ, the seller must apply the customer's rate, and this can create a debt or a credit and so on...

Didn't noticed the same thing with shops in UK or France tho.

Edit: grammar

If any of you Australians want someone to drop ship you, email me

How do they know they can trust you?

Our postal service offers it. I’m not joking either!

Australia Post also invented email... a couple of years ago.

The move is a response to a new GST policy that will apply 10% tax to all overseas purchases under $1,000 announced by the Turnbull government last year in a bid to “level the playing field” between Australian and overseas retailers.

Not so much "new" but "now enforced to all the things"

Already happened with Valve. Buying from the store has 10% in the price, but not all prices changed.

Why not collect the tax rather than banning Australians?

Presumably they will collect the tax when using the Australian Amazon site. It's not that Australians can't use Amazon at all, they just can't order from the US site to avoid the tax.

The Australian site only has a small fraction of the products, so it’s not a straight substitution.

and its much more expensive

Presumably complying with the import tax is a PITA. Import/export usually is. Certainly it's more work than adding a redirect.

There may also be some organizational lines being crossed; I can imagine the American site team doesn't really want to deal with Australian tax issues.

There are companies out there that will take care of collecting duties/taxes from your foreign customers, like https://www.i-parcel.com/

I'd guess the answer is they're not happy about the tax.

It does not level the playing field. A foreign company cannot reclaim GST on input cost. A 10% levy will kill the profit margin of the magority of businesses and make it impossible to compete in Australia. You are probably best creating an Aus subsidiary but then you open yourself up to accusations of transfer pricing. In addition it’s likely other countries will do something similar in retaliation and this will hurt Aus exporters. There is a reason why this wasn’t done earlier and it’s because it’s really stupid. Only big businesses can sufficiently amortize compliance cost and hire enough lawyers and accountants to transfer price away the profits to some tax haven. Small businesses will get hosed.

TIL: Australians need more American friends

hack/zaraina/Hopson

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