Forum - View topicHow do I buy online, from US to Aus.
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15596 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Lately I have started to buy anime, as I only started not too long ago, I often spend quite some time looking through stores near me for anime. But an anime that I realy want is Kanon 2006, I have checked to see if I could find it with no luck, I checked the online catalouge of Madman (the business that distributes anime to Australia) and there is nothing about Kanon on there site. I have got a bit worried as I realy want it, and I guess that I should buy online, but I have never bought anything online before and thus have no clue what to do. Can someone please offer me some acvice about where I could possibly buy the boxset of Kanon, from America or somthing safely and be imported over to Australia. I am starting to get quite depressed over not being able to get this
 , and I am at a loss for how to do this.
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Try via www.amazon.com -they sell their goods all over the world, but they have high shipping costs, that's make buying one boxset uneconomical (I don't know exactly how much it is, but to UE it was much more than price of DVD itself). You can buy things together with anyone else and share the costs.
I don't recommend www.ebay.com -there are lot of bootlegs there and it's hardly to recognise if it's oryginal one. Also if you buy DVD from USA be aware of fact that you probably won't be able to play it using regular DVD player- USA and Canada DVDs are Region 1 (you can record it on computer or multinational DVD). Remember, not to buy DVD's without this blockade- on 99% they are bootlegs. More: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=3193231 |
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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As a starting point, you're in a good situation. Your government appears to allow DVD purchases into the country tax free, provided they're worth less than 1000 AUD. (Be thankful; I can only dream of benefits like that.)
If you have a Visa or Mastercard, you'll be able to buy Kanon from places like Rob's Anime Corner Store, TRSI, Anime Nation and Amazon USA. These are a few of the more reputable places. I believe they all offer international shipping. Anime Nation accept Paypal as well, an added plus for international buyers. When buying boxsets from Amazon, stay away from the Marketplace. Check the international shipping prices. Shop around. You may find that the cheapest price has expensive shipping fees. The best sellers provide accurate predictions for what it'll cost to ship the item outside North America. When predicting the final price in AUD, remember to take into account a small increase in price above the current exchange rate. This is due to the conversion fee charged by the credit card company, or Paypal if applicable. From my experience, this is roughly 2-2.5 percent. Unfortunately, Funimation are struggling to match supply with demand as regards Kanon. My order is still backordered with the supplier. If it's not in stock at a given retailer, you might have to wait a week or so for it to become available. This is the estimate I've been given by customer service at the place I ordered it from. As EireformContinent mentions, the DVDs will be encoded for R1. Not to worry though; there exists safe and effective software to overcome region blocking. Google will help you on that. These points should help you on your way. Note that it may be a good idea to post on the Australian forum to get additional information from your fellow countrymen. There may be options or precautions relevant to you which I am unaware of. |
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daxomni
 Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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As already stated the first step is to ensure you have a credit or debit card that is setup to make international purchases. In the US international purchasing options for credit and debit cards are generally handled by your bank or credit union. If you don't have such a card then you'll want to look for retailers that can process international ACH transactions against your checking account or who support international payment intermediaries like PayPal who can do complete the transaction on their behalf.
Americans are blessed with a similarly sized tax-free import allowance per month, which sounds great until you look at our multi-trillion-dollar deficit with the rest of the world.
In my experience international conversion rates and related fees can add up to anywhere from a paltry 1% to an astounding 10% and even higher depending on the size of the purchase and the countries and payment processors involved. Be sure to check with your financial institution ahead of time to ensure you're aware of all fees and conversion rates. Keep in mind that you may be able to find a better rate elsewhere. My current provider was chosen in part based on their exchange rates and fee structure for international transactions.
http://www.videohelp.com/ |
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eyeresist
 Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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Greetings to a fellow Sydney-sider. As others have said, the essential thing you'll need is a credit card. You should be easily able to get one at your bank, and it should be good for any international purchase.
I mostly buy from TRSI now ( http://www.rightstuf.com/ ), as they are usually much cheaper than Amazon. HOWEVER, for your first purchase from TRSI, they will want a scan of the front and back of your credit card, plus a scan of a recent credit card statement. You can block out the last four numbers of the credit card number if you want, for security's sake. After this, ordering should be smooth sailing. Region coding is usually NOT a problem in Australia (my parents surprised me by being able to find a non-hacked DVD player, but then it was an LG piece of crap). If it does turn out to be an issue, you can watch it on a PC. Exchange rate to the US: just divide US dollar amount by .75 (or add on one third of the price). Bear in mind that shipping will usually add up to at least AU$20, but you'll probably still pay less than buying domestically. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15596 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Thank you everyone who has given me information, I will do some extra research before to find out what I will exactly do aswell. some of you were saying somthing about egion coding, does anyone know if that will be an issue with an Xbox360, as that is how I watch most of my DVD's.
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eyeresist
Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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Google is your friend.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/914580.html This thread says the 360 is region-locked (but you should check it for yourself IMO). If you look around, you can find a cheap stand-alone DVD player that will be region free (I found one for $50 at Dick Smith last year). |
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arooga
Posts: 1 |
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Well i was in the same situation and had to go the us to get kanon. 1. I decided to order from rightstuf as their shipping is reasonably, have decent customer service in case something goes wrong and i could combine other items from their bargain bin which makes the shipping worthwhile. It's a little hastle to provide cc images but once thats done it's all good. Took about 2.5 weeks to get here. fwiw the exchange atm is .8 which is quite good and the bank fees were 1% (hardly anything) 2. You need a region free dvd player. Most players can be made region free.. do a search on the net for a code (or firmware in the case of pioneers). I'm not sure about this part but i think you also need the dvd player to be capable of outputting ntsc. and whilst almost all can be made region free i'm not sure if they can all output ntsc (i don't think some of the current lg players do that, but the pioneers do). I'm not sure about it though. Anyway when you play you set you're dvd player to either multiscan or ntsc output. hopefully somewhere in the options it gives you that ability. 3. Most important, your tv needs to accept a ntsc signal. Pretty much all do nowadays but if you got an old tele make sure you check that. You may get by without all of that, but that works for me, and ordering from rightstuf with the shipping is still cheaper than going through madman, plus you get pretty boxes whilst madman pump out fatpacks 
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EireformContinent
Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Don't do it with your parents' one- buy cheap player, even from 2nd hand and then do try to hack it:) |
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serrin
 Posts: 19 Location: Australia |
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To add my 2 cents, DVD Pacific (USA store, not the now dead Australian store) is generally cheaper than TRSI for DVDs & blu rays even with their 30% off everything sale. TRSI, however, is probably the cheapest place on the net to get manga (even without the above mentioned 30% off everything sale).
If you are using TRSI a lot I recommend you get a got anime membership. If you don't have a credit card, one I might suggest (full disclosure, I don't work for GE money or any of its subsidiaries) is the Wizard Advantage Mastercard which has no international transaction fees and no annual account keeping fees. I'm not sure about the other major banking institutions, but the CBA used to charge me Visa and Mastercard's standard international transaction fees (2.2% and 2.7% I think they're sitting at now?) when I ordered online before I got the Wizard CC. |
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daxomni
Posts: 2650 Location: Somewhere else. |
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I've purchased from DVD Pacific as well and I agree that they often have lower prices. However, I still really appreciate TRSI's involvement in the anime community and the way they treat their customers is the best I've seen for an online store. Some of the complaints they resolve may not even be their fault, but they'll still fix it anyway. That's the sort of thing I wish all retailers would be willing to do.
From the looks of it if someone has never owned a credit card then they're unlikely to be approved for the Wizard Advantage card. In addition the base interest rate seems rather high to me and I couldn't find any concrete information about conversion rates with casual searching. There appears to be no way to pay it off automatically or to pay online. Everything has to be done the old fashioned 1995 way. Here in 2009. It also sounds like some of the advantages of the Wizard card require over-paying your balance at which point they consider the next bill or advance to be a debit instead of a credit transaction. It's something you can do inadvertently on almost any credit card from my understanding, but most people probably don't do it intentionally. And then there's the disappointing revelation that the Wizard support call center is apparently in India. I've learned to understand Indian English when I'm talking in person, but over the phone it's still hard for me to pick up on what they're saying or to speak my words in a way they can understand. I guess the main concern I have is where are they getting the base network fees from? My first assumption is that the conversion fees are free because they're being covered by padding the conversion rates?
The base V/MC network fees should be closer to 1-1.5% based on my understanding, but maybe that's only in the opposite direction. The network fees are still being charged on a Wizard purchase, they're just being paid by GE in this case. There is a card in the US that does roughly the same thing but it's not solidified in their contract, meaning they can change it anytime they want. That kept me from taking their card seriously. Those are just my observations, I'm certainly no expert on credit card accounts. If I'm wrong about the Wizard feel free to post corrections. |
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serrin
Posts: 19 Location: Australia |
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Before I start, I should point out that getting a credit card is a serious decision not to be taken lightly. These things aren't wells of free money. Think about how you're going to pay it off before spending it.
I know it sounds a bit crazy but I'm not the only one, here's what a quick google showed: http://www.inthemix.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=247295 http://www.creditcardfinder.com.au/credit-cards-for-no-annual-fees Ok the same google search shows that since Wizard is now gone, they're no longer issuing new cards. Might just be a matter of time before they close out mine too .
Here's a list of the major CC providers in Australia and their international transaction rates: http://www.creditcardfinder.com.au/foreign-currency-international-fees-for-credit-cards.html They don't mention account keeping fees though, so you'll have to look into those too. On an aside, to counter the points you have raised daxomni.
Well the only way is to find out and apply. In Australia, banking corporations still hand them out like candy. I'm a student, with a part time job, along with social security (in Australia we had out social security like candy too) I get about $330 AUD a week (which is about 3c USD, I kid, at the time of writing that's about $265 USD). The CBA up and handed me a credit card with a limit of $3500. No joke; I was 18 at the time, and I told them I was paying rent, living expenses etc from that pool of money too. That was several years ago, and because I never ran into debt, when I applied for the Wizard, they gave me a limit of $6000.
True, but the whole idea of having a credit card is to never be in debt. Like most other credit cards (except the low rate credit cards) the Wizard has a 55 day interest free period. While they no longer actively advertise that they don't charge mastercard's standard international transaction fees (and they haven't for a while, I've looked around and it seems like there is a fear that they might axe this at some point in the future) the last time I ordered something off eBay they're still charging me at an exchange rate less than 1% off XE's rates at the time of the transaction.
While you can't do any sort of EFT because GE money isn't linked to any account, in Australia we have a system called B-Pay which most banks allows you transfer money to designated billers via telephone, post office and in the cases of major banks (ANZ, CBA, Westpac, Suncorp Metway, NAB) also allow you to pay over the internet. You don't have to over-pay your balance as it has a 55 day interest free period, like 95% of the non-low rate credit cards out there (in Australia anyway).
And your point is? Perhaps you should learn to listen better? I have no problems dealing with their call centre nor with people from overseas with heavy accents and next year when I graduate and do the graveyard shift at the (what you USAs call) ER I'll have no choice but to take their histories without the help of an interpreter as trying to get one at 3am in the morning is quite difficult. Sometimes, you'll just have to deal with people's accents. It's not their fault. Take it slow and remain calm. The call centre people at least do that. Patients I find, especially those in distress, have a problem doing that.
That's what I thought too originally, but according to the transactions I've made, they're not doing it any more so than CBA were and then CBA slugged me with a 2%+ fee on top of that.
The banks layer on its own fees most of the time. They claimed it was V/MC's fees but it turns out that most of it isn't. However when all banking institutions are charging that amount, I was fooled into thinking that V/MC's fees were that high. On closer inspection it's closer to <1%.
They are. Instead of transaction fees, this credit card offers no rewards points and all the other so called 'perks' that other credit cards offer. I still use my regular CBA credit card for transactions in Australia. The merchant still pays a portion of the fees to V/MC and to the bank, regardless of where the transaction takes place. I'm assuming GE money takes their cut out of it here instead. Anyway this whole argument is entirely academic as GE Money are no longer handing out new Wizard Clear Advantage Credit Cards. Which sucks. |
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eyeresist
Posts: 995 Location: a 320x240 resolution igloo (Sydney) |
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The one may have something to do with the other 
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