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Australian prices! 18-May-2011 At 3:40:47 PM strerror

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On 18/05/2011 citationx wrote:
>The latest skyrocketing of the USD/AUD ratio
>in our favour probably hasn't been taken into account, but then hey, they
>buy in bulk once or twice a year depending on the products.

that's a good point in their favour but the differences I'm talking about aren't even currency related, that is they are significantly larger then a few percent.

>There are probably many other factors why people don't buy overseas, even
>if they did know about these forwarders. Laziness is probably a major factor,
>but things like "spur of the moment" need or "i'm a climbing bum living
>in the gramps" may have something to do with it. it may even be that these
>climbers don't really care about an extra $15 for a cam (i spend in excess
>of $30 a week on coffee alone).

Laziness I get. I've also heard people say that they don't trust forwarders (bit bizare but ok), but the worse off financially you are, then surely the more incentive to get things at good prices? Also we're not just talking about $15. I recently spent about ~1.3k AUD (over some months) on climbing / camping gear for a saving of around ~1kAUD. A good example is my Mountain Hardware Drifter 3 man tent and foot print that I paid $160AUD for. See how close you can match that locally, in some cases I've seen prices at over 3 times that cost and that's without the footprint!

>Another issue, with non-hardware stuff, is that it may be hard to find
>a comparable product here for trying on.

Something I ran into until I learnt to trust manufacturers sizing and read a few user reviews on popular sites giving an idea as to fit.

>Also, you've only been on for three posts and dont give any information
>about who you are. What gives with the secrecy?

What secrecy? Am I meant to do an introduction post or something? :)

You want me to put more info in my profile or something? I guess I'm a little wary by default, I'm a security consultant by profession so I tend not to fill out online requests for personal information terribly accurately.