Tonefiend Forum

While we're on the topic, Australian prices! (am I right!)

I feel for you man. When I lived in Bangkok, my aussie friends would visit and load up on american/western electronics- which were still a solid 30-50% over US MSRP prices. My guess is that a lot of distributors are still locked into old contracts, but really I think they're just trying to milk the majority population who don't challenge them. Considering that a lot of the gear is manufactured in Thailand and Indo, it should actually be marginally cheaper for some items. I've long thought that some enterprising individual would set up a online volume retailer outside of KL/S'pore to serve SE Asia/Pacifica, but the majority of ones that I'm aware of have too many grey market items to be reliable.

I guess just be thankful that some of the US volume suppliers are willing to ship. When I lived over there, I didn't even have that option. Here in Spain, I can get stuff shipped, but customs is a total scam. Even with the right papers, if they challenge you, you have to pay a processing fee to prove it and either fly to Madrid to get it out of customs or pay an agent plus shipping. In either case, you end up having to add 80-100 euros to each shipment even if you don't technically owe anything extra. It's ridiculous.