I think Australia Post should be talking very very earnestly with Amazon. As I mentioned above, Oz Post are trying to drag themselves out from a long term decline in relevance and profitability by concentrating on internet sales delivery. A large company like Amazon that is capable of doing large scale drop-offs to the regional distribution centres Oz Post operates would find a very useful and willing partner.
Oz Post are looking at providing pickup centres as well, where you can go after hours and pick up parcels left during the day. These can be secure, and parcels can be signed for. Thus providing a cheap trackable delivery mechanism. Tracking being what appears to be the missing link in affordable parcel delivery for Oz customers. If they were to link this to cheap sea born cargo shipping, everyone would win. Expensive goods still run the gauntlet of taxes and clearing charges, but there should be a way to avoid the insane prices we are slugged with at the moment.
For those who didn’t know, Amazon bought The Book Depository a couple years back. I’m not sure why Amazon maintains both The Book Depository and Amazon.co.uk. In my experience, The Book Depository has better prices when shipping to the US is included. I wonder if it has something to do with TBD being based on Guernsey, which is a crown dependency and not legally part of the UK.
I agree with this, and I agree there’s definitely a hole in the International Delivery To Australia market between “Item flown here in its own private aeroplane at vast expense” and “It gets here when it gets here”.
I also think there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing happening in that courier services cost a fortune because there isn’t the demand for millions of packages to be sent all over the country daily, but the lack of a service which can deliver millions of packages daily and at a competitive price is hampering the ability of someone like Amazon to set up here.
It will be interesting to see how Australia Post’s repositioning goes. Personally, I think they’re doing the right thing, especially considering New Zealand Post is looking at cutting its mail service back to three days a week(!) due to lack of profitability (and a reported decrease in the number of letters being sent).
Actually a lot of things available online from the UK have free shipping. It’s likely because they don’t have to charge us VAT, a type of sales tax, so they can advertise the same price they advertise to UK customers and the shipping is absorbed by the VAT. I get lots of bicycle stuff from the UK.
No overseas business will set up in Australia if they have any sense. Australia Post are signatories to an international postage agreement that means they have had to raise charges for local deliveries by 30% or more to subsidize their loss making delivery of overseas packages. They cannot raise charges for overseas shipments so overseas internet sellers have huge advantages over any business trying to ship within Australia.
I can’t say I’ve some across “signature on delivery” being a requirement for most online businesses here, but to be fair I don’t do a lot of domestic online shopping since I’d (usually) rather pay a bit extra (buying from an actual shop) and have the item now and not sometime next week.
Check out booko.com.au and you’ll see why it is pointless for overseas operators to start shipping from within Australia. All the free shipping comes from overseas. I can buy books from England for less than the $7 or so that an Australian based business will charge me to mail it from the next suburb. They have to charge that because Australia Post charge them that. If they were in Hong Kong however they would only have to pay what Hong Kong post charge them.
Like I said before, it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. If Amazon (or someone like it) set up here, we might see affordable parcel delivery. But because parcel delivery costs so much, it’s not attractive for an Amazon-like business to establish here.
Well to start with, most people in Australia do live in big cities. About 70% of us live in the top 5 cities in the country. So the majority market for anything comes from the cities.
Inter-library loan, at least in Victoria, is superb … for what you can get. I’ve had ILL books come from the Moe library (think: podunk town in the middle of the state) in just a few days - and the process would work in reverse. The loan network spans most of the state.
However, if what you want is newish and not immensely popular, you’re probably out of luck. There’s a limit to what is actually kept in libraries.
This has been my experience. The libraries here can be fantastic resources and they’re vital parts of the community, but they don’t have everything by a long shot.
