Aussie import duty

bw wrote on 2/13/2004, 5:21 AM
Just a warning to frugal (mean) Aussies like me to beware of Customs and Excise when considering importing software. I opted to buy my Vegas 4 upgrade direct from Sony as I thought I would save about au$100 over the price from local agents. Durrrr, I got hit with au$107 import duty. All this in the same week our governments announced a free trade agreement too.
Have also heard that even $100 - $200 wedding presents are being hit with duty. Of course the sensible thing to do is download and just pay for activation, that way you also avoid the us$52 express package charge. I just thought this time I would like to have a box and the demo disks.
Ah well we live and learn. (why does it always have to be the hard way)

Comments

farss wrote on 2/13/2004, 6:36 AM
There is NO import duty in this country anymore on the majority of things that I know of. What you do get hit with is brokerage charges and GST. The trap to watch for is that GST is applied to the whole lot including freight.

It pays to shop around, I imported an item recently from the US, one dealer would only ship Fedex @ USD 107 and the one I ended up using shipped via DHL for $55 making a big saving. In the end I only paid about 60% of the local price which is a BIG saving.

Stuff like software though is generally reasonably priced on Oz, its hardware stuff that's either not available here or at an outrageous price that's worthwhile importing. And the final irony, I went to buy a Rode microphone, made here in Sydney, cheapest way to buy would have been to import from the US!

Eventually found a local dealer who realised how ludicrous the RRP was and I got it for just over half that. Still could have saved $10 importing it!
AlanC wrote on 2/13/2004, 6:39 AM
A few years ago I was in Las Vegas on holiday (vacation for you non Brits) and bought a product called AiGotcha, a video capture device that plugged in to the parallel port.

I was assured by the salesman in the store that it was PAL compatible but when I returned home guess what, it wasn't PAL. I wrote to AiGotcha and eventually they exchanged the capture device for a PAL version.

I had to pay all the carriage charges (both ways) plus import duty plus local tax (VAT).

What started out as a relatively inexpensive purchase (about $65 I think) ended up costing me almost three times that. Neither AiGotcha nor the store offered any compensation.

And even worse, the product was garbage by todays standards!