Note: This post is devoted to trying to save people money, if you know someone who would like to save some money on books, games and possibly other things please direct them here. Also, if you find any other bargain locations post them in the comments.
For people who don't live in Australia they are sometimes quite surprised when find out exactly how much people in Australia pay for certain things. With two of my major vices being books and video games I suffer through this quite regularly, as a couple of examples can demonstrate:
Turn Coat by Jim Butcher (Hardcover)
Actual Australian price:
$34.95, a markup of about 72% or 102% depending on country
Batman Arkham Asylum (XBOX360)
Actual Australian Price:
$99.95, A markup 40% or 29% depending on country
This huge difference in price is what I refer to as the "Australia Tax". Maybe it's because everywhere else in the world is jealous that their country isn't as awesome as ours? (/sarcasm)
Note that
EB Games Australia also adds what I like to call either a "stupidity tax" or a "parent tax" and is charging
$119.95 for the above mentioned game. The reason I refer to it as such is that EB seems to be able to make inordinate amount of sales from people who don't know how to shop around.
Their modus operandi is to set up shops that are kid friendly, i.e. brightly lit with a wide store entrance that allow high visibility, in very large shopping centers. Kids wander in and beg parents to buy stuff, while the parents have no idea how much cheaper they can buy this stuff at other retailers like
JB Hi-Fi. In fact before JB Hi-Fi became the national success it now is the only major options for buying games were EB Games or places like K-Mart and Target.
The thing is even with JB Hi-Fi around with the internet has opened us up to the possibilities of shopping in a global marketplace rather than a local one. For me it started for me when I wanted to get a game that had just been released in Japan for the Gamcube,
Naruto: Gekitou Ninja Taisen. Knowing that it would be years before the game would see our sunny shores I went poking around the internet and stumbled across
Play-Asia. A few weeks later I happily was playing away and was completely sold on importing.
The only problem people in Australia often run into with games is region locking. The USA and most of Asia run on the NTSC format while Europe, Australia and New Zealand run on the PAL format. Historically these regions were incompatible but that has been less an issue with more recent consoles.
Some more recent developments for Australia is the the Australian dollar's strength against the British pound. It allows for worry free importing since all UK games will work without an issue on local machines.
Here's a couple of places I've found that have saved me money.
Games:
- Gamestracker: This site is great, it's a price aggregator from a number of online retailers. If you're looking for something, look here first.
- Play Asia: These guys specialise in products from around Asia including games, books, music, DVDs and toys. Prices are in US dollars. Bought a bunch of stuff here over the years including a couple of arcade sticks for the PS2
- CD WOW: If you subscribe to their newsletters you'll get some deals a few times a week in your email. Most of them are pretty average but occasionally you get a nice 10% or more off everything in the store. They've got very good prices on PC games, usually half of what you'd pay for stuff at EB Games. Prices are in Australian dollars and there's free shipping inside Australia.
- The Hut: UK based site similar to CD WOW in that they have regular special deals / sales and have pretty cheap shippin to Australia (about £3). I managed to get a copy of Fallout 3 from here for about $40 when EB was selling used copies for $110, nice little discount.
Books
There's pretty much only one place I go for books these days, Book Depository. Book Depository is a UK based business that have two sites, their
UK version and their
US version. Their big selling point is that they have free worldwide shipping, so while they have
slightly more expensive prices than Amazon you pay far less after shipping gets added. Their shipping is fast too, most books arrive in Australia in about a week.
Since I've found the site I've barely bought stuff anywhere else and have saved hundreds of dollars on the books I've purchased. The only minor criticism I have of them is that sometimes you get a cheaper price on one site comapred to the other so when you want to buy something you have check both their sites to make sure you're getting the absolute cheapest price.
Either way you'll be getting a much better detail on books than getting them from Australian book retailers.
Final Note
The key thing Australians can do to get better deals for these things is educating their friends and family that they can get better deals by shopping online. Move enough money away from the Australian market and local reatilers, publishers and distributors will be forced to start offering a better deal to Australian consumers.
