Let me say to start with that I try to help Australian industry - in the supermarket I will always buy Australian over foreign imports even though it usually costs more. But when we wanted to buy binoculars for our trip to Africa, well there is only so much you can take!
From a store in Melbourne our chosen brand cost $350 a pair. Why can I find the same binoculars on the internet for $160? There are limits to my support for our retailers when this happens. A retailer here could buy online, put on 100% mark-up and still charge $350! There's something wrong here. We've all heard the complaints of Gerry Harvey, Myer etc about people buying online but they need to come out with a decent reason for this price difference. GST is only 10% so that accounts for only a small part. They may have to pay a higher wholesale price due to smaller quantities but that still can't make up for such a big difference.
And I am so sick of being told that we can't buy certain things in Australia as there is no demand for them! I buy woollen socks online because I cannot find the style I want here - the usual store defence is "we can't stock everything" so they stock only the plainest, safest styles.The optician gave me the same story last week about glasses frames.
I'll still support our food producers but everything else? Only when retailers stop ripping us off!
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