Why is Australia ripped off so much, and we accept it?

[GQPorkroll]

Ok, 2 things I'll discuss here firstly, let me say I work casually in a spare parts shop, a small franchise in NSW only, Sydney mainly, but also Hunter Valley, Taree and Tuncurry. 12 stores all up.

Supercheap auto. Hundreds of stores Australia wide. Ok, advertised specials, and their own brand, they're cheap. Other stuff, like filters, etc, they're not.

A girl came in for an air filter for her Pulsar. Repco $48, Supercheap, $79 (and those two shops are side by side) we had one for $12.95 same brand. $60 odd dollars difference. She bought it and vowed to never go back in there.

A lady wanted wiper blades. Gave her a price of $10 and she asked how much for fitting. Nothing. Ill throw them on, only take a minute. She told me SC wanted $35 a side for the blades and $15 PER SIDE to fit!! Wiper blades, for f!ck sake.

Another guy came in and wanted roll pins. He made the comment no one in supercheap knew what they were. We had them but not the size he wanted. He also commented the last 4 things he bought there, he had found cheaper elsewhere. I asked why he kept going back. "They're cheaper".

My favourite was a guy who came in and asked for the diesel oil we had in our catalogue. I told him we hadn't had a catalogue out since Dec and he started arguing, so I took him over to our oil section, we had it there, Valvoline Super Diesel, 10L, he pulls out the catalogue, $59.95. Ours is on the shelf, every day at $44.95. He wouldn't buy it from us, as the catalogue was cheaper. Is there a new math I'm unaware of? He left our shop and bought the exact same item from supercheap for $59.95 and bought it back in to show me. He compared it to ours, exactly the same. Same bottle, packaging, lid, everything. He still maintains theirs was cheaper, even after looking at his docket, and our price.

Anyway, despite me absolutely hating the store, it's not my main issue.

Find a car that's sold in Australia and, lets say, America. Our dollar is stronger. Even allowing for a bit extra for the car to be built as RHD the prices shouldn't be radically different.

Boss was looking at a Ranger. He was shown a top of the line Toyota Landfill. $129k from memory. He googled it at work and in the US, the same spec vehicle is selling for around $50-60k. Half the price we pay.

The new Dodge Chargers and Ford Mustangs, even the Vipers are all sub $60k cars in a reasonably hot spec. I remember a segment on Top Gear where Hammond had to buy a Charger for $10k over book price and still it was under $50k. So why is it when they're imported into Australia (considering we have Ford, Dodge and GM dealers) are the so ridiculous dear!? I was all but set on buying a Charger or Challenger, until I saw they were $120-145k. Even Hummers and F250's are cheap cars in the states. If someone can show me $120k value in a Hummer, I'd love to see it.

My mate bought a caravan. $5000 to buy a container and ship it over, $35k for the van. $2000 for government bullshit and probably a few hundred for rego and insurance. $145k in Aus. He lived in it for a few months, sold it for $90k. He had 15 people phone up for it the first day the paper went out.

Now, that's big scale stuff, but what bout small scale? Iphone apps in the US are 99c. Ours are $1.19 for the same thing, with a stronger dollar. If you have kids, or buy a few apps that soon adds up, especially if you have in app purchases etc. That's a minimum of 20c on each app. The difference increases as the app price does, too.

We have one of the most inefficient Internet networks in the modern world, with some of the slowest speeds and tightest caps per $. I'm paying $149 for 200gig per month for ADSL2 because Tel$tra has a monopoly and no one else has lines in our exchange, my mate in the states pays $50 for unlimited net and phone with faster speeds.

If you want parts for a V8 Ford or Chev, 9 times out of 10 it's cheaper to buy it from the states and import it. I wanted a carby for my GT motor, only one importer in Aus, at the time $899 plus $50 freight for the 850 I wanted. On eBay, I bought a brand new, chrome 850 quick fuel for $425 plus $50 shipping from the distributor, the same place the Australian supplier bought theirs from, and I had it in 3 days. Allowing for his discount for bulk, etc, he's putting 100% markup on the item, and then will complain no one supports him.

That's another thing that pisses me off. Why does our postal service take 3/4 days to get a parcel from Sydney to Newcastle! It's a 3hr drive. I'm presently waiting on a CB from Perth and I'm placing bets on what will arrive first, the CB, or the parcel coming from the states. Again, we're paying top dollar for a slow, inefficient, Neanderthal like service. Couriers can be just as bad. Try being in a shop and telling the customer that a parcel coming from a warehouse 45mins away won't arrive until the next day when they order at 9am. It costs us $9 and it takes 24hrs plus for it to arrive. It's almost like some couriers are delivering on foot. We had a parcel delivered to Sydney instead of Cessnock, again, 2 1/2 hr drive. I was told 2 days to get it to me. Come on, you stuffed up, get in your van and deliver it to me. It was 12pm when I contacted them. I then had a mechanic tell me to punch it up my arse as he needed it for a job.

I think my rant is over, on this section, anyway, but god some things piss me right off.