Has the 10% GST on LV foreign imports affected your buying habits?

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  Clear on 16/10/2018 - 08:46

  +2

  Something interesting to note is that the eBay sellers with China or Hong Kong in their profile location but say the item is 'located' in Australia do not have a GST charge. I bought a heap from them in the last sale where their profile said Hong Kong, item location Australia and the Dpex packaging saying Hong Kong. Finally a positive for those misleading sellers!

  Fortunately there are still plenty of China sites out there not complying. Mostly ones owned by big corporations like AliExpress, Zapals and Joybuy are.

  • 

    Windows7forever on 17/10/2018 - 06:50

    Nice. So in these cases, the seller's deception and/or misleading conduct is working in your favour lol

    • 

      Clear on 17/10/2018 - 07:39

      +1

      Yep that's right. It's eprfect for grey imports during sitewide sales.

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  holdenmg on 16/10/2018 - 09:10

  +5

  If "LV" means Louis Vuitton, then N/A

  If "LV" means Low Value, then Yes.

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  87percent on 16/10/2018 - 09:25

  I've never really paid attention to shipping costs, but it seems like posting items from the US has gone up. I'm seeing $70 for postage to send a pair of shoes

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  djkelly69 on 16/10/2018 - 10:01

  +3

  lesser known sites such as … AliExpress

  ?? Are they not one of the bigger/well known sites?

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  EightImmortals on 16/10/2018 - 10:43

  Instead of my regular iherb purchase I will wait until they have the items I want for at least 10% discount. With smaller outfits that haven't submitted to the 'strayan governments petulant demands it's business as usual.

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  [Deactivated] on 16/10/2018 - 12:33

  i'm buying less, but still hardly buying anything in australia

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  therooftop on 16/10/2018 - 13:10

  It has. I will no longer shop at Harvey Norman.

  In terms of GST, I dont mind paying the 10 % if its still the regular price. Amazon has been annoying though, there was a vinyl record that I was interested in which was $16 USD, would have been $23 USD (roughly 30 AUD) delivered to Australia under the old pricing.
  Same item on Amazon AU - 37 AUD, without shipping.

  If they wanted the GST the government shouldve been the ones to collect it. Who''s to know 'how much these companies are taking from the GST and how much they actually give back to the Australian goverment. Its all a very flawed system.

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  ibuy on 16/10/2018 - 13:19

  +2

  Spending has been tempered. However if something is much cheaper overseas and/or not available in Australia I will still buy. I always calculate what it costs here if it is available vs what I have to pay overseas and if necessary add the GST. This however has not made me buy more locally. The service at many retail stores still sucks. It has just made me seek alternate ways of buying overseas - such as posting to friends and relatives or someone who is traveling in that country pick up my goods and bring them back here.

  One way around this is to do what some buyers are doing which is to have goods purchased in another country received at an address that is local. I’m not talking about reshipping companies but normal Mom and Dad homes for people who want to make money on the side. You have goods shipped to them and they onsend it to you. The reason is that items sent from a non commercial operation are not subject to GST. You can find lots of people willing to do this for a small fee on airtasker.com or similar.

  A note on eBay sellers. If the seller uses the Global shipping option then the “GST” is more than 10%. I asked eBay about this and they are entitled to charge more than 10% to cover admin costs. If the seller uses USPS (in the States) or royal mail (UK) then only GST on the total is levied.

  I bet if the opposing parties made the removal of this GST an election issue there would be a lot of swings to that party!