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Comment by annzabelle | Hacker News Reader

I moved to New Zealand recently from the US and am now seeing that everywhere. A lot of the time some local ecommerce platform imports the Australian version of most electronics with a markup, but we don't have official retailers for a lot of products, most notably Pixel phones. Also no Apple stores, though there are official retailers for Apple products.

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What's sad and ironic is that GabeN actually lived here for a few years (during COVID) and has even gotten a PR... you'd think he'd show some love for us hobbitses.

At least someone on the Google Pixel team finally discovered a map with New Zealand on it, and Pixel phones can now place calls over LTE here!

I do have my US pixel setup with a local esim for calls/data and a US tello esim that "wifi calls" on my US number over the data from the local esim. It's been working pretty seamlessly and means that, like, my US login.gov two factor tokens still get to my number.

Also, my office here is absolutely covered in maps of just New Zealand, which always gives me a chuckle.

It's way, way better than it was 15 years ago. Amazon and Amazon AU, Costco, etc. TradeMe for the cheaper stuff you don't want to wait for shipping from China.

But yeah the selection and availability is nowhere near the USA or even say.. Indonesia.

Indonesian here, electronics are everywhere yeah, especially Chinese-made. But the law leans a lot on protectionism, if you try importing one you'll be subject to 10% tax on customs and "other fees".

If you try to import a phone, you'll also have to pay additional fees to "activate" the IMEI, otherwise you won't be able to connect to local cellular providers.

I'm in the rural South Island, which doesn't help either. No Costco for me.

You do have the eighth wonder of the world however. The 'Wall of Whittakers' at Pak'n'Save.

Also sorry that we send you our trash from Cadburies in tassie.

I live an hour from the nearest Pak'n'Save...

It's lovely here, but it's been a real shift vs having nearly every retailer available in my county and being able to go to NYC for a weekend on a whim.

I'm across the ditch in Oz, and every time I am in NZ it is always peculiar just how forgotten they are in some spaces.

I live in Melbourne, and our population is larger than that of all NZ so I get why they kind of get forgotten, but it still sucks.

Crazy, I thought they would have just treated kiwistan as another australian state.

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