Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s American site

Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by oblio on Thursday May 31, 2018 @09:25AM (#17196084)

This may become? Hasn't it always been like this for most commercial companies and sites?

"Video not available in your country". "Google Nexus is not available for your country, check back soon". google.com -> google.ro (or whatever).

I guess most Americans haven't noticed it because they haven't needed stuff from abroad...

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by wlesieutre on Thursday May 31, 2018 @09:43AM (#17196201)

I've occasionally run across European online retailers while looking to buy something online and sometimes the prices are even attractive before you see what the shipping costs. They've never flat out told me "You can't order from here because you're in the US."

Cell phones and videos have service and licensing problems that physical goods don't run into, so geographic limits on those is less surprising.

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by ACow_Adonis on Thursday May 31, 2018 @09:46AM (#17196229)

Its not that you "can't order from amazon".

Its that there's a geo-blocked/redirected domain which australians will be shown which adjusts prices and collect sales tax.

As an Australian, being geoblocked and having prices dynamically changed/adjusted based upon my IP address is extremely old-hat since half the internet already does it...GST or not...

Edit: although, as an australian, there ARE a whole host of services/content we're not supposed to be able to see because we're australian due to blocking in our country. Its why so many of us use VPN's and dropship services and the like...

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by andai on Thursday May 31, 2018 @07:54PM (#17201362)

Moving to Australia soon, what's the blocking like?

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by rosege on Thursday May 31, 2018 @09:31PM (#17201884)

Not too bad now but after 1 July then will probably be a lot worse

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by mieseratte on Thursday May 31, 2018 @10:02AM (#17196355)

> Cell phones and videos have service and licensing problems that physical goods don't run into, so geographic limits on those is less surprising.

My personal favorite is when there is geo-restricted licensing on some content, and the content isn't available in my region so I effectively can't buy something even though I want to. That I frequently have to find an obscure media seller in a foreign country, without enforced geo-restrictions to pay is asinine.

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by mikestew on Thursday May 31, 2018 @11:37AM (#17197108)

They've never flat out told me "You can't order from here because you're in the US."

I've been told that, for something as simple as an attached room for an RV/caravan awning. Fiamma product, can't find it in the U. S. "Shipping costs be damned, send me one of those!" And they flat out said they wouldn't. Prolly customs paperwork or something, that they didn't want to do (or didn't know how).

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by Fifer82 on Thursday May 31, 2018 @09:46AM (#17196233)

Yes :(.

$59.50 (£44.75) for Levi.com Jeans in US £85.50 from the "Levi.com UK" branded store.

In the early days, when we had double the exchange on the dollar, I used to buy everything from the US, and the shipping prices were pennies. It used to be exciting to have different markets to browse.

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by cardiffspaceman on Thursday May 31, 2018 @11:11AM (#17196876)

In 2002 a novel came out in the UK. I priced on amazon.com and it was only available at ca. $100 from people who had probably read it on the plane back from UK. I priced it at amazon.co.uk and bought it. It was about $60 or $70 on my doorstep. Not a great price, because it was probably much less when it got expurgated and published in the US. But much less than $100.

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by koolba on Thursday May 31, 2018 @10:40AM (#17196632)

What part of companies complying with local tax law saddens you?

If Amazon, or anyone else for that matter, wants access to the Australian market then they need to abide by the tax regulations as dictated by Australia. If it's the tax itself that considered off putting, that's up to Australians to decide (i.e. local protectionism / profit capture v.s. lower prices and higher global imports).

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by criddell on Thursday May 31, 2018 @11:11AM (#17196868)

I grew up in Canada and in the 70's and 80's when I ordered something from the US or elsewhere, it would be shipped to me and I would get a notice in the mail that a package was waiting for me along with the amount of taxes that I owed. That's a nice way to handle it because I could order from anywhere in the world and every small vendor across the planet didn't need to understand Canadian tax codes. I suspect if all those companies had to collect and remit taxes to the Canadian government, they would have just refused to ship there. That's the part that would sadden me.

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by cdeez on Thursday May 31, 2018 @01:21PM (#17198176)

I was amazed with the Aussie approach to implementing this as putting it on the merchants who are unlikely to be AU tax payers is impossible. It is designed to be unenforceable.

We still have your exact system in the UK (and rest of EU?) it kills my desire to import unless the price is vastly different. Anything from non-EU countries above £15 gets hit with 20% VAT & an admin fee (£8 I think!).

https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by IronBacon on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:14PM (#17197470)

Well, if you look, for example computers parts in Germany with geizhals.de, seems like the shops' majority will deliver products only inland. I've read something about complications with different VAT rates between European countries, IIRC if they differ, the seller must apply the customer's rate, and this can create a debt or a credit and so on...

Didn't noticed the same thing with shops in UK or France tho.

Edit: grammar

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by emodendroket on Thursday May 31, 2018 @11:52AM (#17197233)

It saddens you that all retailers selling to customers in the same place have the same tax collection rules applied to them?

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by koyote on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:01PM (#17197341)

But instead of applying the tax rules they simply decided to not sell to Australia anymore. I believe OP is sad about the accelerating move to a more fragmented internet.

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Re:Australians will no longer be able to order from Amazon’s... by emodendroket on Thursday May 31, 2018 @01:37PM (#17198342)

Well, Amazon is taking their ball and going home because they're not happy about the tax law. They threatened to do similar in Seattle. I suppose this episode is an answer when people ask in what way Amazon enjoys monopoly power.

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