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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

morgoth wrote:
Here's a little tip for our friends in NZ/AU.

I live in Belgium, a tiny tiny country that has tiny tiny importers and ridiculously gakky prices compared to neighbouring countries.

Anything you want to buy you can get at least 10% cheaper in France, another 10% cheaper in Germany, and easily another 10% cheaper in the US.

So what do we do ? We buy most of our stuff from Germany, and some from the US.

So stop whining, get organized, import your plastic crack and who cares about the idiotic importers who think they can sell the same gak at +20%.

Yes, we often forget how easy it is for Australians to get in their cars and drive across the border to Germany or the Netherlands or even Luxembourg and France.

I joke of course

Yes, because in 2016, you need to *drive* somewhere to buy from there.
Incidentally, Australia has it pretty easy due to the proximity with Asia, there's only the odd product, like GW, which will be less of a bargain because it comes from the western world unlike most everything.
I'm pretty sure shipping from HK doesn't take 3 weeks when you live in Australia.

 Rolsheen wrote:

Yes the prices are high and people expecting full armies for certain prices are just kidding themselves, other model companies charge the same or more per model yet don't receive the same backlash because they've always charged that amount and people don't remember the good old days when this model was this price etc for that company.

Which other company charges as much for a plastic infantry model as GW?

morgoth wrote:
Yes, because in 2016, you need to *drive* somewhere to buy from there.

That loud buzzing noise isn't the sound of someone driving across the border to another country. It's the sound of you missing his point.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

morgoth wrote:
Yes, because in 2016, you need to *drive* somewhere to buy from there.

That loud buzzing noise isn't the sound of someone driving across the border to another country. It's the sound of you missing his point.

Please enlighten me, I did not see any other point in his post - unless sarcasm is a point to you.

Either way, the complaining is sickening.

Let's not fall out here over nothing.

The point I was making is that you are fortunate to be in Belgium because of your proximity to the UK, and of course, other big countries such as France and Germany.

As you rightly point out, Australia has other advantages for buying and selling to Asia, but as GW is a British company, they have to rely on shipping.

Aerosol cans have to come by ship, so there's always a premium on those.

Australians generally seem to have high wages due to their successful economy, but that's no excuse for charging high prices.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Australians generally seem to have high wages due to their successful economy, but that's no excuse for charging high prices.

Ever heard of the Big Mac Index...?

Oh great, this discussion again, here, let's just get it out of the way quickly...

"GW has absurd Australian prices!"
"But you have a higher minimum wage!"
"Yeah except cost of living is so high that you aren't left with much discretionary income"
"Well other companies overcharge too"
"Yeah and those companies suck, good companies have more fair pricing and GW prices are high to begin with"
"But you have to pay more to employ people in Australia"
"But GW's wholesale price in Oz is higher than the bloody retail price in other countries!"
"It's expensive to ship to Australia"
"I can import stuff myself for a fraction of the cost"
"Well just import it"
"But GW's trade conditions won't let independent retailers sell internationally"
"Oh well, sucks to be you"
"Well at least we have awesome beaches and fething kangaroos"
"Feth you"
"Feth you too"

*New Zealander speaks up* "Well it's even worse here!"
"No one cares, go back to the Shire you filthy hobbit"

I wonder if anyone asked GW why the australian prices are so far off, and if they answered.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some good reasons in there.
After all, that might explain why many other companies do it as well.


Also, I don't think GW applying (partly justified) worse pricing to 2% of their customers is enough to compensate for all the good things they've done.

If you don't like the prices, import the stuff and let the local GW die, then maybe theyll react.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Oh great, this discussion again, here, let's just get it out of the way quickly...

Please enlighten me where this argument

"You have to pay more to employ people in Australia"

has been invalidated...

GW seems to believe that they will only flourish if they have their own stores (which is admittedly debatable)... Following this approach they must/should compensate the higher costs.

SKR.HH wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Oh great, this discussion again, here, let's just get it out of the way quickly...

Please enlighten me where this argument

"You have to pay more to employ people in Australia"

has been invalidated...

GW seems to believe that they will only flourish if they have their own stores (which is admittedly debatable)... Following this approach they must/should compensate the higher costs.

I don't think that's applicable.

The price of GW product is the same in Germany as in Belgium, while labor costs are definitely higher in Belgium.
There are other places in Europe with varying labor costs and all sell GW produce at the exact same € price.

I would think it's more related to the vast overhead of maintaining an additional remote warehouse, OR a problem with the rate of currency exchange updates, OR a problem with import taxes.

SKR.HH wrote:
"You have to pay more to employ people in Australia"

It's true you have to pay people more in Australia BUT the wholesale price is significantly higher in Australia so local retailers don't even have the opportunity to be competitive with international pricing.

If GW sold the models wholesale at a similar price as they do elsewhere in the world, the difference between Australian pricing and international pricing would drop to sweet feth all.

Morgoth wrote:
I would think it's more related to the vast overhead of maintaining an additional remote warehouse, OR a problem with the rate of currency exchange updates, OR a problem with import taxes.

OR They're charging a premium because they think they can?

Seriously, you only have to look at their inter-regional sales ban to come to the conclusion that there may be some less than altruistic intention behind the idea.

Or does it seem perfectly plausible to you that an individual could purchase a product, made from the same stuff, in the same country, by the same people, from halfway around the world, paying only domestic shipping with no extraordinary discounts and still be better off than if they walked down their own high street and picked it up?

A small premium for logistical and duty reasons would be understandable, but the disparity goes way beyond anything that's easily explained by that.

If it isn't possible for GW to sell in country without a massive price hike and artificially limited competition, then they should just pull out and leave it to other smalller businesses that can. It would be less damaging to them than these arbitrary price premiums.

morgoth wrote:
I would think it's more related to the vast overhead of maintaining an additional remote warehouse,

If that is the reason it's GW's fault for doing a poor job of managing themselves.

OR a problem with the rate of currency exchange updates,

Well the GBP has dropped because of brexit, so I don't expect them to match the current exchange rate, but they should be closer to the average over the past couple of years.

OR a problem with import taxes.

Actually, taxes in Australia are LESS than the UK, so it should actually offset the shipping/warehouse costs somewhat.

It wasn't that many years ago I could order product direct from the UK GW online store and have it delivered to my door for less than I could buy it in a shop by a decent amount, probably not far off what the local retailers were paying wholesale.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the high prices here are partly because GW are idiots who opened tons of stores here and we know their own stores aren't great money makers. Australia has one of the highest (if not the highest?) GW stores per capita besides the UK itself. Which is silly because you have to pay people even more in Australia than elsewhere, if there's anywhere in the world you should avoid opening loss-leading stores, it's Australia.

But instead of fixing their problem, they raise the price they sell to independents to try and compensate. If they just gave up their poor business model they'd probably be able to both lower prices and increase profits out here.

At least that's my guess.

morgoth wrote:
I wonder if anyone asked GW why the australian prices are so far off, and if they answered.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some good reasons in there.
After all, that might explain why many other companies do it as well.

I already know the answer: Because they think they can get away with it.

Every company (not just GW) would love to charge AUS/NZ prizes in Belgium as well, but they wouldn't benefit from it since you can easily parallel-import the stuff into Belgium from another EU nation. Some companies (GW included) perceive that they can charge vastly higher prices in AUS/NZ and make up for lower number of sales with higher profit margins.

It's really no more difficult than that.

It's a fething amazing time to play 40k and 30k with all the gak that's coming out.

However, they're still fething up royally the prices down under. Not sure why they hate them so much.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
I think some people are going to complain about GW just on principle. Personally I think the company has made great strides to address the gak they've been peddling the last couple of years, yes mistakes have been made but far fewer in the last year. Every model company has come out with some utter crap ( Privateer Press soft plastic comes to mind ), but this new GW has listened to the community and looked at it's sales and done a full 180 on some of it bad decisions ( White Dwarf, Specialist Games etc ). Age of Sigmar wasn't every-bodies favourite release ( and boy did the haters go on and on and on... ), but the new releases for 40k ( Deathwatch, GSC, Admech ) have exceeded expectations and show a bright future for further hinted releases.
Yes the prices are high and people expecting full armies for certain prices are just kidding themselves, other model companies charge the same or more per model yet don't receive the same backlash because they've always charged that amount and people don't remember the good old days when this model was this price etc for that company.

You forget that a lot of the AOS hate was self-inflicted by GW, especially their treatment of older models with the silly rules, which they didn't include for newer models.

I maintain to this day that it was a massive middle finger to loyal customers.

WHFB sales had been in the toilet for awhile. They tried something new to make more money. It happens.

 kronk wrote:
It's a fething amazing time to play 40k and 30k with all the gak that's coming out.

However, they're still fething up royally the prices down under. Not sure why they hate them so much.

Kirby: "Honey, I'm home!"
Mrs. Kirby: "Oh gak."
Other man: "Crikey mate, don't you ever knock?"

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
I think some people are going to complain about GW just on principle. Personally I think the company has made great strides to address the gak they've been peddling the last couple of years, yes mistakes have been made but far fewer in the last year. Every model company has come out with some utter crap ( Privateer Press soft plastic comes to mind ), but this new GW has listened to the community and looked at it's sales and done a full 180 on some of it bad decisions ( White Dwarf, Specialist Games etc ). Age of Sigmar wasn't every-bodies favourite release ( and boy did the haters go on and on and on... ), but the new releases for 40k ( Deathwatch, GSC, Admech ) have exceeded expectations and show a bright future for further hinted releases.
Yes the prices are high and people expecting full armies for certain prices are just kidding themselves, other model companies charge the same or more per model yet don't receive the same backlash because they've always charged that amount and people don't remember the good old days when this model was this price etc for that company.

You forget that a lot of the AOS hate was self-inflicted by GW, especially their treatment of older models with the silly rules, which they didn't include for newer models.

I maintain to this day that it was a massive middle finger to loyal customers.

WHFB sales had been in the toilet for awhile. They tried something new to make more money. It happens.

I never had any problem with them changing the game and I freely admit that WHFB was going down the drain, but it was the way they handled it that annoyed me and a lot o folder customers.

It was the 'ha ha you're an idiot for buying our stuff for years,' approach that got my goat.

But these are old arguments...




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:
It's a fething amazing time to play 40k and 30k with all the gak that's coming out.

However, they're still fething up royally the prices down under. Not sure why they hate them so much.

This is my theory.

Ignore the British flag, as GW are predominantly an English company and there is a huge sporting rivalry between England and Australia at sports such as Rugby Union and Cricket.

Personally, I don't think the Australians have ever forgiven England for Ian Botham* and I suspect the English know this and reacted accordingly, hence the high GW prices for Australia

* Ian Botham was the bad boy of English cricket: drinking, smoking, falling out of nightclubs, fighting the police. You name it, he did it.

He was also one hell of a cricket player, and he smashed the hell out of the Aussies back in the 1980s

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 jreilly89 wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Rolsheen wrote:
I think some people are going to complain about GW just on principle. Personally I think the company has made great strides to address the gak they've been peddling the last couple of years, yes mistakes have been made but far fewer in the last year. Every model company has come out with some utter crap ( Privateer Press soft plastic comes to mind ), but this new GW has listened to the community and looked at it's sales and done a full 180 on some of it bad decisions ( White Dwarf, Specialist Games etc ). Age of Sigmar wasn't every-bodies favourite release ( and boy did the haters go on and on and on... ), but the new releases for 40k ( Deathwatch, GSC, Admech ) have exceeded expectations and show a bright future for further hinted releases.
Yes the prices are high and people expecting full armies for certain prices are just kidding themselves, other model companies charge the same or more per model yet don't receive the same backlash because they've always charged that amount and people don't remember the good old days when this model was this price etc for that company.

You forget that a lot of the AOS hate was self-inflicted by GW, especially their treatment of older models with the silly rules, which they didn't include for newer models.

I maintain to this day that it was a massive middle finger to loyal customers.

WHFB sales had been in the toilet for awhile. They tried something new to make more money. It happens.

I never had any problem with them changing the game and I freely admit that WHFB was going down the drain, but it was the way they handled it that annoyed me and a lot o folder customers.

It was the 'ha ha you're an idiot for buying our stuff for years,' approach that got my goat.

But these are old arguments...

For the silly rules? Sure it's stupid, but the fact that you could take all of your models and put them on the table was huge to me. They could have done like they did with 40k and just not given rules to older models like Marbo.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 kronk wrote:
It's a fething amazing time to play 40k and 30k with all the gak that's coming out.

However, they're still fething up royally the prices down under. Not sure why they hate them so much.

Kirby: "Honey, I'm home!"
Mrs. Kirby: "Oh gak."
Other man: "Crikey mate, don't you ever knock?"

That actually makes sense.

 kronk wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 kronk wrote:
It's a fething amazing time to play 40k and 30k with all the gak that's coming out.

However, they're still fething up royally the prices down under. Not sure why they hate them so much.

Kirby: "Honey, I'm home!"
Mrs. Kirby: "Oh gak."
Other man: "Crikey mate, don't you ever knock?"

That actually makes sense.

You have any relatives in Oz, Kronk?

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 kronk wrote:
It's a fething amazing time to play 40k and 30k with all the gak that's coming out.

However, they're still fething up royally the prices down under. Not sure why they hate them so much.

Kirby: "Honey, I'm home!"
Mrs. Kirby: "Oh gak."
Other man: "Crikey mate, don't you ever knock?"

That actually makes sense.

You have any relatives in Oz, Kronk?

Not that my dad knows of... He did get around in the Army.

SKR.HH wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Australians generally seem to have high wages due to their successful economy, but that's no excuse for charging high prices.

Ever heard of the Big Mac Index...?

Wonderful, I'm guessing you'll be quoting economics for dummies next?

Joyboozer wrote:

SKR.HH wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

Australians generally seem to have high wages due to their successful economy, but that's no excuse for charging high prices.

Ever heard of the Big Mac Index...?

Wonderful, I'm guessing you'll be quoting economics for dummies next?

If that's what's needed to get you to understand that prices in a foreign country are not just "price in a different country x current conversion rate"...

Aside from the fact that the Big Mac Index was never intended to be serious, I'll concede that it has become relevant.

However, the BMI for Sterling, adjusted for GDP or not, has Australia at less than 5% deviated.

So if it was an attempt to justify GW's prices, one wonders where you were going with it?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Aside from the fact that the Big Mac Index was never intended to be serious, I'll concede that it has become relevant.

However, the BMI for Sterling, adjusted for GDP or not, has Australia at less than 5% deviated.

So if it was an attempt to justify GW's prices, one wonders where you were going with it?

As pointed out in the (admittedly abit snarky) post prices in different countries do not simply follow the prices in other countries. There are evidently lots of other factors playing in like different transport costs, wages, leases and so on.

Yet the fact that Australia and the U.K. are pretty much parity in the BMI suggests that this isn't a factor?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Yet the fact that Australia and the U.K. are pretty much parity in the BMI suggests that this isn't a factor?

They are not the same for all goods... For example the Big Mac is certainly not produced in the US and afterwards shipped to Australia.

But that's not the point you were making.

You were trying to argue that Australian GW is more expensive because of in-country cost factors.

Using the method you cited, I showed that, in fact, they're broadly similar.

That GW cannot (hint: they actually can) get product into Australia without commanding an enormous premium is a flaw with their model, not down to any inherent macroeconomic factors for doing business in Australia.

Or, they're charging a premium because they can, and are prepared to artificially limit competition in order to safeguard that.

 Azreal13 wrote:
But that's not the point you were making.

You were trying to argue that Australian GW is more expensive because of in-country cost factors.

Using the method you cited, I showed that, in fact, they're broadly similar.

That GW cannot (hint: they actually can) get product into Australia without commanding an enormous premium is a flaw with their model, not down to any inherent macroeconomic factors for doing business in Australia.

Or, they're charging a premium because they can, and are prepared to artificially limit competition in order to safeguard that.

Oh, I certainly did not claim that this explains in it's complete entirety. But why would they do this in Australia, New Zealand and Japan, but not (to that extent) in Canada and the US?

I have made the comparisons based on a SC box (50 GBP equivalent) and the difference in the US and Canada are between about 25 and 15 percent (based on todays exchange rate) and about 15 and 5 percent (based on 1st of May Exchange rate) whereas Australia and New Zealand are rather in the range of 35 to 45 percent.

GW is using the same trade policy towards America but they don't follow the same pricing logic? Why?