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 lord_blackfang wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Cool. Now repeal the international embargo.

Even purely digital content is more expensive in your part of the world. Steam game codes are region-locked. This isn't a GW issue.

That's specifically because of EBGames (Gamestop) and a limited number of local distrbutors having too much power in the realm of videogame distribution here. It's not a magical thing that's due to AU or NZ laws or taxes or the price of living here. It's simply gouging and higher profits based on historical precedent. See also: CDs/DVDs/etc. GW simply has us locked to prices based on an exchange rate from 20 years ago.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

The exact same rules apply to Magic cards, DVDs, college textbooks. It's not a GW issue. It's an issue of our governments allowing corporations to maximally exploit consumers in each region.

We can branch off in to looking at other products, but when it comes to wargames and plastic models, I've always been able to buy them internationally and have them shipped to Oz, though the local Oz price isn't usually a hell of a lot worse unless you're looking at GW products anyway.

Online shopping cart ban is the most bizarre thing in have ever heard.

They have never tried anything like that in the UK.
Hell it's so bizarre it sounds like it might be illegal.

I Can't wrap my head around it.

 Azazelx wrote:
You might not be buying much of a variety of products. PP stuff is about the same, but Warlord's stuff is a good 25%+ more expensive, and Battlefront's stuff is also much more expensive with GW-style regional pricing. GW may be the worst offender, but Battlefront do the same thing as a company, and local distributor's fat margins do the local industry no favours. Spend 10 minutes doing a search and find the number of "RRP" prices that you can find the base box of Zombicide for (before retailer "discounts"). You should be able to find the "before discount RRP" ranging from AU$100 to $150, and dollar fluctuation hasn't gone that far.

I honestly don't know anywhere that sells Battlefront in Australia anymore so I'm not all that aware of their practices or price differences The Combat Company I think sold a bit of Battlefront for a while but they had issues with the distributor so dropped them. The local FLGS only stocked a display stand of Battlefront, my 2nd most local had a very limited range but no one was buying so they eventually dropped it.

I buy Battlefront stuff from the UK simply because I can't find it locally, not because of the price difference

Warlord being 25% more, meh, that's really not too bad. That's small enough of a difference that unless I'm doing a massive order I'd sooner just buy it in Australia. The first product I checked was the Blitzkrieg box and it was $130AUD from Firestorm games and $145 from The Combat company, so that's only $15 and about 12% difference. I'm not going to waste time buying from the UK to save $15/12%. A couple of other things I checked seemed to be around the 25% mark.

Honestly that's the sort of price difference I expect living in the middle of bloody nowhere and with exchange rate fluctuations and whatnot. I also pay probably 20-30%-ish more for Airfix kits in Australia than I could get them from the UK.

You have to accept some price difference when you live in an isolated country, I understand that.

BUT.... GW we're talking 40-75% difference in price from the UK to Australia. That's fething insane. If GW reopened their UK online store to Australian customers you'd be crazy to buy from a local retailer (if I recall correctly when the UK online store was still open to Australians, the price difference was more in the 20-30% range and I'm guessing most people just bought stuff locally, but not in the bloody 40-75% range).

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I honestly don't know anywhere that sells Battlefront in Australia anymore so I'm not all that aware of their practices or price differences The Combat Company I think sold a bit of Battlefront for a while but they had issues with the distributor so dropped them. The local FLGS only stocked a display stand of Battlefront, my 2nd most local had a very limited range but no one was buying so they eventually dropped it.

I buy Battlefront stuff from the UK simply because I can't find it locally, not because of the price difference

Battlefront is in New Zealand and their factory is in Indonesia. I find it ironic that they ship the product halfway around the world to a retailer in the UK for them just to ship it back to you...

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
BUT.... GW we're talking 40-75% difference in price from the UK to Australia. That's fething insane. If GW reopened their UK online store to Australian customers you'd be crazy to buy from a local retailer (if I recall correctly when the UK online store was still open to Australians, the price difference was more in the 20-30% range and I'm guessing most people just bought stuff locally, but not in the bloody 40-75% range).

I recently painted the Lizardman Bloodbowl team that I got years and years ago, and I wanted to know where I got it from. Turns out I had ordered it direct from GWUK back when they still allowed that. It used to happen quite a bit for the Direct Only stuff that I couldn't get through Maelstrom Games. It was basically 50% off, plus shipping.

To order from the same company, just from the other side of the planet. Made no sense.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
BUT.... GW we're talking 40-75% difference in price from the UK to Australia. That's fething insane. If GW reopened their UK online store to Australian customers you'd be crazy to buy from a local retailer (if I recall correctly when the UK online store was still open to Australians, the price difference was more in the 20-30% range and I'm guessing most people just bought stuff locally, but not in the bloody 40-75% range).

I recently painted the Lizardman Bloodbowl team that I got years and years ago, and I wanted to know where I got it from. Turns out I had ordered it direct from GWUK back when they still allowed that. It used to happen quite a bit for the Direct Only stuff that I couldn't get through Maelstrom Games. It was basically 50% off, plus shipping.

To order from the same company, just from the other side of the planet. Made no sense.

Interesting, the last time I ordered something from the UK online store it was LotR stuff, so probably early to mid 2000's and I don't remember it being massively cheaper. But maybe I'm just not remembering right and GW have always been scumbags

EDIT: Remember if you were buying stuff back in the early 2000's, the exchange rate was more like 30 to 40 cents AU to a pound. I was under the impression most of the current pricing woes in Australia came from GW being all to happy to raise prices as the exchange rate fell, but only slowed down price rises when the exchange rate recovered instead of halting or reversing. But maybe I'm just remembering wrong.

But either way my point was that GW is definitely on the crap side of regional pricing, even if you can point to other companies with regional price differences, GW is the worst or at best one of the worst. Battlefront seems to be coming in 2nd place, but at least you can still buy Battlefront stuff from the UK without having to go through resellers that are breaking their contract.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Interesting, the last time I ordered something from the UK online store it was LotR stuff, so probably early to mid 2000's and I don't remember it being massively cheaper. But maybe I'm just not remembering right and GW have always been scumbags
.

I was buying army boxes from the UK in the mid-2000s for around 60-70% of their local price, even after shipping.

Pre-order stuff generally arrived faster from the UK than locally, too.

Arrived even quicker from the US. They sent stuff so damned fast...

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Warlord being 25% more, meh, that's really not too bad. That's small enough of a difference that unless I'm doing a massive order I'd sooner just buy it in Australia. The first product I checked was the Blitzkrieg box and it was $130AUD from Firestorm games and $145 from The Combat company, so that's only $15 and about 12% difference. I'm not going to waste time buying from the UK to save $15/12%. A couple of other things I checked seemed to be around the 25% mark.

Honestly that's the sort of price difference I expect living in the middle of bloody nowhere and with exchange rate fluctuations and whatnot. I also pay probably 20-30%-ish more for Airfix kits in Australia than I could get them from the UK.

You have to accept some price difference when you live in an isolated country, I understand that.

I did say 25% PLUS, and so I'll take the slight wait to get four boxed sets for the price of every three - along with not paying transport fees and the time investment to go to a (not so local) store and instead have it delivered to my door or work. And I tend to buy directly from WLG rather than other discounters as well because stock and service. oh, and locals tend to hit you hard on shipping with very few exceptions. When Combat Company raised their free shipping ceiling from (I think) $100 to $150 I pretty much stopped bothering with them. I get to wait almost as long, pay more per item and pay shipping? Sign me up!

BUT.... GW we're talking 40-75% difference in price from the UK to Australia. That's fething insane. If GW reopened their UK online store to Australian customers you'd be crazy to buy from a local retailer (if I recall correctly when the UK online store was still open to Australians, the price difference was more in the 20-30% range and I'm guessing most people just bought stuff locally, but not in the bloody 40-75% range).

You both recall and guess incorrectly. It was still closer to double than 20-30%. That's why we were all buying from the UK/US/etc (and I'd hazard a good number of us still are, not to mention the apparent increasing popularity of other more dubious sources I keep hearing about). Even then it was easier to buy stuff from the UK store and have it shipped to a friend in the UK/Europe and have them ship it to you. Of course, it was only worth doing for direct-only goods, and anything else you'd just get from Maelstrom, Wayland, et al. Which is why they enacted the embargo in the first place - ergo people buying locally would be people who wanted something immediately, didn't trust online shopping, wanted to support their local store or simply were not aware of the full range of options.

 Azazelx wrote:
I did say 25% PLUS

I think you're exaggerating slightly. As I said the first thing I checked was only 12% difference from Firestorm compared to TCC.

Looking through a handful of items, I'm seeing a range from about 10% to 30% difference, I found a couple of oddball things that were about 40% cheaper from firestorm (for some reason the T34 tanks are a lot cheaper in the UK, but as I said that doesn't seem to be the norm).

Su76 - 24%
Soviet Infantry - 24%
Semper Fidelis box - 9.7%
US Armoured Fist - 21%
US Marines - 29%
M4 Sherman - 21%
Single T34 - 48%
T34 Platoon - 32%
Blitzkrieg set - 9.7%

If you compare RRP there's a bigger difference, but that's only relevant if you buy from places that sell for the RRP. GW's problem is that their WHOLESALE price in Australia is insane, so Australian stores can't come anywhere near competing. But on Warlord's stuff it seems the TCC can offer deeper discounts % wise, so that indicates that it's likely that there's a lesser difference (% wise) in wholesale price than there is in RRP.... which means Australian retailers can try and compete.

and so I'll take the slight wait to get four boxed sets for the price of every three

And that's fair enough, but my point was they're still not nearly as bad as GW, where to find something less than 40% difference is strange and you can find stuff up to 75% difference.

You both recall and guess incorrectly.

As I said in another post between that one and this one, I guess GW have always been scumbags then

I do recall less people buying internationally back then, but maybe it was just more people being scared of the internet. I bought locally because my local hobby store gave me 15% off and it was less hassle just to grab stuff on my way to/from work.

I did a few orders from the UK back when it was allowed, but it was only ever when I needed bits that you couldn't get from Australia and I'd usually just tack on a few blisters to the order to make it worthwhile.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

I do recall less people buying internationally back then, but maybe it was just more people being scared of the internet.

Pretty much. Online shopping had a pretty slow take up in Oz, because people either didn't trust it or weren't aware of just how much they could save.

Just an update, got this email from Miniature Market:

During GAMA this year, Games Workshop made a major announcement that they were lifting several restrictions in regards to online selling of their product. Starting in May 2017, online websites will be allowed to list products along with pictures and descriptions. Games Workshop products can now be bought and sold just like everything else listed on our website. There will be a M.A.P. (Minimum Advertised Price) associated with these products at 15% off of the SRP.

Over the next few weeks we are going to be stocking up and making room in our warehouse for more than 1,000 Games Workshop products. When the restriction is lifted, we will send out an email notifying everyone once the items are available for purchase. We will not be selling any Games Workshop products prior to that date. Be sure to sign up for our Games Workshop newsletter to be notified of product updates and news.

But wait: there’s more …..

In addition to carrying their products on our website, we also want to help build the Games Workshop community. From 2009 to 2011 our local retail shop in St Louis would frequently host Games Workshop events. There would often be 30 to 40 people in attendance. We plan to bring these events back to our retail storefront. The St Louis gaming community has been missing a reliable place to play and we hope to fill that void. To be notified of local Games Workshop events, please be sure to sign up for our Retail Store Events newsletter.

Finally, two years ago we created a section on our website called the Review Corner. We have more than 1,000 reviews from gamers and we plan to expand this section to include table top games. Games Workshop reviews and podcasts will be a major addition to the Review Corner in 2017.

Steve
CEO

http://www.miniaturemarket.com/games-workshop?utm_source=Miniature+Market+-+Full+List&utm_campaign=ebc367cf3b-Games_Workshop_Announcement_2017_03_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_be5b9f7f95-ebc367cf3b-27295329&mc_cid=ebc367cf3b&mc_eid=5c74178040