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Comment by vladvasiliu | Hacker News Reader

> You pay higher prices due to returns

Do you?

I remember when I was a cash-strapped student in France ordering photo gear from the US (Adorama or B&H) because the price + international shipping + customs + vat (the last two being applied on top of the shipping) + UPS's fees for handling customs was cheaper than buying from Europe.

You know what the kicker was? It was a tripod made in Italy.

It said "made in Italy" on it, not just an Italian brand manufactured in China. This was generally true for "regular" photo equipment (made in Japan), too.

I haven't checked the prices recently, though.

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Yeah, they're obviously never seen what other countries pay for the same products. I know here in New Zealand, especially anything tech has a "NZ tax" added, not a govt tax, just a saying here, meaning the price of living in NZ. It's not uncommon for things to be double the price here compared to buying in the US and shipping here (accounting for all fees).

Recent example buying a Ubiquiti UniFi Lite 8-Port switch from B&H shipped to NZ, all fee's accounted for is $138NZD (82USD) cheaper then buying it local.

Someone is making bank somewhere in the supply chain.

People often say, well you live on an island in the middle of nowhere, that's the price you pay. But that doesn't check out if a company in the US can ship a single (not on sale, at RRP) item for way less. How can a wholesalers in NZ, who bulk ships it's here at wholesale rate, and cheap (bulk) shipping rate, then end up with a price so much higher at retail.

Having extensively suffered the NZ tax before moving across the ditch - but still suffering a lesser version of it here - I suspect it's a question of scale for packaging and distribution.

That switch is probably a relatively niche item when compared to some generic TP-Link switch, and AU & NZ are basically the only countries to use the Type I plug. That means the production run for that switch is tiny - it's probably not even a full days run, which means the economy of sale is reduced.

On top of that, the middle man is probably distributing a tiny amount of these to each store, so they can't just pull out pallets from the shipping container and put them on a truck, individual items probably need to be pulled out and re-packaged. All this adds cost.

You pay higher prices than you would otherwise, not higher prices overall necessarily.

Yes, at least in the UK, Amazon is frequently slightly more expensive than elsewhere, but often I'll knowingly pay the small premium because of the known easy, free, returns.

No EU 2y warranty though. Was the price difference significant?

I can't remember correctly, but it was around 100 € I'd say

This was a tripod, basically 3 sticks hinged together. I could've lived without the warranty.

But IME if they ship it to Europe, then it will come with an "international warranty", so I think the manufacturer is supposed to honor the warranty here, too. My tripod and head had that warranty, but I never needed to use it. I also bought another item from there, a bit more "electronical", probably a lens, but I can't quite remember. It also came with an international warranty card.

There are many items which they won't ship, though, mostly cameras.

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