The Australian government gave notice to online retailers that they must collect tax on behalf of the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and submit the tax collected to the ATO for purchases made by Australians overseas. Surprisingly, online retailers objected to this and at the time threatened to block Australian shoppers. Now Amazon has taken the step of preventing Australians from purchasing from their US site and sending parcels to Australia. Amazon have stated that Australians can now purchase products from the Australian Amazon site, which while true comes with a significant markup of, in some cases, 160 per cent or more over the price of the product in the US Amazon site. This does not prevent Australians from working around this technicality by engaging with a shipping company in America to bounce products through their warehouse and having the parcels forwarded on to an Australia address. In the mean time, from July 1st 2018 onward, Amazon will no longer ship products to an Australian address.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday June 03 2018, @04:23AM (2 children)
Interestingly, the mailman showed up to my door last Sunday morning. This surprised me, so went ut to greet him. I made some remark like 'wow, Sunday delivery' to which he responded out of nowhere, 'yeah...Amazon really saved the post office'.
Well, that is the job of the postal system. If I had a choice between delivering some plastic widget that a kid will enjoy for thirty seconds before throwing away and a stack of advertisements that will go directly to the trash without being looked at, I'll go for the plastic. Cuz those are the only two viable options anymore.
(Score: 3, Informative) by suburbanitemediocrity on Sunday June 03 2018, @05:46AM (1 child)
Not sure why this is funny. He was serious.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Monday June 04 2018, @07:33PM
I'm always in favor of explaining humor, so...
That bit is funny, even if it is true.
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