Cheaper import games from Europe could be coming to an end

We’re known for doing our bargain guides here at Vooks, but the next few ones will be missing at least one, namely one from overseas.

From the first of July 2018, businesses based overseas may need to register for GST, charge GST on imported goods valued at $1000AU or less sold to people in Australia, and pay the GST collected to the Australian Tax office. This will apply to any business overseas that would make $75,000AU worth of sales from Australians.

What the government is hoping is that these stores will register for GST, make a little bank off them and at the same time maybe Australian’s won’t buy from international stores but instead keep the money in Australia. The idea being that stores will pass on this GST, raising prices, and make the playing field more level between international retailers and Australian retailers. (How they’re actually going to enforce this we don’t know)

The problem is now that stores aren’t even bothering to ship to Australia, scared off by the changes. One store that we feature regularly in our guides Base.com has stopped shipping to Australia because of the tax changes. They either can’t afford it or can’t be bothered to try and follow our rules. Another retailer, OzGameShop, despite the name, is based in the UK, they have confirmed to us that they will be continuing to ship to Australia and abide by the new rules here’s what they said in a statement;

Given we’ve been providing a service to the Australian gaming and entertainment community for over 8 years now, we feel like part of that community and we will not be letting people down when the new GST laws come into place. I’m happy to say that Ozgameshop.com isn’t going anywhere! We will remain to be as competitive as we currently are and will continue to bring Aussies the best products at the best prices.

It doesn’t end there, because despite being mostly useless since launch in Australia, Amazon.com.au has actually been matching these stores in an attempt to win you over and buy local (like competition or something). At the time of writing Street Fighter: 30th Anniversary Collection is currently $30 less than retail and $20 less than any other Australian retailer. That $30 less is what roughly the game was from Base.com and is from OzGameShop right now. Just this weekend since Base.com stopped shipping Dillon’s Dead-Heat Breakers, OzGameShop stopped matching it and Amazon.com.au raised its price.

It’s not just this game, we follow game prices closely when writing our guides, Amazon has been matching these importers for the last couple of months. So will Amazon or another retailers continue to match these stores if they’re not shipping to Australia? If these international stores are paying GST will they pass on the price to us?

Maybe this is just an issue with Nintendo games, specifically Switch games which have a Switch tax and are known to be more expensive – but it could affect everyone, not just Nintendo fans.

NB: Full statement from OzGameShop, which indicates they’re changing their operation slightly, actually moving to Australia.

Given we’ve been providing a service to the Australian gaming and entertainment community for over 8 years now, we feel like part of that community and we will not be letting people down when the new GST laws come into place. I’m happy to say that Ozgameshop.com isn’t going anywhere! We will remain to be as competitive as we currently are and will continue to bring Aussies the best products at the best prices. Sure our delivery times might be a day or two longer than the larger national retailers but just take a quick look at their prices…  Our Player Points, loyalty system is used by a lot of our customers and this helps reduce the purchase price quite significantly. To date we have had over 1.25m uses of Player Points and saved customers over $5m to date!!

 

We have some pretty cool news too that’s going to be happening in the coming months… we’re moving to Australia!! That’s all I can say about that for now but Ozgameshop.com is only going to get bigger and will continue to smash out products at prices that make your buck go further!