I imagine NZ retailers would be cheering about this. 

What is quite strange is that I have several photography apps that are on subscription, such as Adobe CC.

If you have a NZ GST number and you give it to them when you sign up, they simply zero rate it and don't charge the GST.

rb99:

 

It was good to be able to get blurays and dvds from there.

 

When Ah woor yoong, before DVDs wur a thing, Ah had an MPEG decoder card in mah PC and amahssed a decent collection of Region 1 discs from Amazon. *Cough* My first standalone DVD player cost $1000 because it was custom chipped to be region free.

Damn, I think it's time to freshen my onion.

SaltyNZ:

 

rb99:

 

It was good to be able to get blurays and dvds from there.

 

 

 

 

When Ah woor yoong, before DVDs wur a thing, Ah had an MPEG decoder card in mah PC and amahssed a decent collection of Region 1 discs from Amazon. *Cough* My first standalone DVD player cost $1000 because it was custom chipped to be region free.

 

 

 

Damn, I think it's time to freshen my onion.

 

Personally I don't buy much in the way of physical media these days. Just the odd major release Blu-ray.

Certainly wouldn't slum it with DVD (standard def 😨) anymore.

If you're a heavy purchaser of physical media it would probably be cheaper in the long run just to get a separate Region-A Blu-ray player and buy discs from the States than use You Shop and pay NZ GST on top of the 20% VAT.   

I only slum it with DVDs when I have to i.e. there just isn't a bluray version (or the premium for BR is ridiculous). I've also bought stuff from the US before, like UK programs they have on BR thats only available on DVD in the UK. It goes on Emby just fine either way.

Am trying out Zavvi. Still pay vat but prices not too bad, so long as it turns up...

evilengineer:

 

SaltyNZ:

 

rb99:

 

It was good to be able to get blurays and dvds from there.

 

 

 

 

When Ah woor yoong, before DVDs wur a thing, Ah had an MPEG decoder card in mah PC and amahssed a decent collection of Region 1 discs from Amazon. *Cough* My first standalone DVD player cost $1000 because it was custom chipped to be region free.

 

 

 

Damn, I think it's time to freshen my onion.

 

 

Personally I don't buy much in the way of physical media these days. Just the odd major release Blu-ray.

 

Certainly wouldn't slum it with DVD (standard def 😨) anymore.

 

If you're a heavy purchaser of physical media it would probably be cheaper in the long run just to get a separate Region-A Blu-ray player and buy discs from the States than use You Shop and pay NZ GST on top of the 20% VAT.   

 

This was in 1996. There was one shop in Penrith that sold DVDs, and it had about 10 discs. I had a special PCI card for my PC - something like this, but not exactly the same - that would decode the DVD and overlay it onto the video card's signal via the VGA pass-through.

It was a gateway drug, because then I wanted to watch them on a TV, which it could do. But as everyone knows, the framerate of NTSC is 30 FPS, and PAL is 25 FPS. This card did the crappy 3:2 pull-down when converting to PAL so it looked fine on a monitor but had regular hitches on the TV which were annoying as all hell when there was a slow pan, like the opening of Aliens.

So at that point I found the only hifi shop in the Sydney region which would custom chip their DVDs to be multi-region. That was a Sony; died after about 18 months and I replaced it with a Toshiba that could also play DVD-Audio disks, so I got some of them in my collection too. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor in 5.1 uncompressed 192KHz/24-bit has to be heard to be believed.

By about another year or so gone, they were starting to become reasonably available in Australia but they were still being released earlier and more cheaply in the US, so I was Amazon's best customer in the world for a while there, I reckon.

By the time I got around to buying a Blu-Ray player, they could be had for $99.

Back to the original topic.

Can't say I'm hugely surprised.

Amazon.com already calculated the "estimated" tax/duty and included it in the shipping costs at check out.

It also knew about the old threshold as evidenced by the sudden jump if you tried ordering anything more than $400.

Amazon.co.uk just took the VAT off and shipped with no tax/duty calculation.

So clearly different IT systems.

I would imagine that the majority of Amazon packages shipped to NZ are from the US site and they've taken the view that it's just not worth making their non-US sites compliant with the new system.  

evilengineer:

 

Back to the original topic.

 

Can't say I'm hugely surprised.

 

Amazon.com already calculated the "estimated" tax/duty and included it in the shipping costs at check out.

 

It also knew about the old threshold as evidenced by the sudden jump if you tried ordering anything more than $400.

 

Amazon.co.uk just took the VAT off and shipped with no tax/duty calculation.

 

So clearly different IT systems.

 

I would imagine that the majority of Amazon packages shipped to NZ are from the US site and they've taken the view that it's just not worth making their non-US sites compliant with the new system.  

 

It's a shame because I always found Amazon JP slightly cheaper than the US site for the same products - shipping was also slightly cheaper - and a heck of a lot faster, usually arriving within four or five days

Geektastic:

 

What is quite strange is that I have several photography apps that are on subscription, such as Adobe CC.

 

If you have a NZ GST number and you give it to them when you sign up, they simply zero rate it and don't charge the GST.

 

That's because it's considered a business to business supply and since you would just claim the input tax credit in New Zealand, it's easier administratively to let the overseas supplier not bother collecting and remitting the GST in these circumstances

Sigh, just hit this now trying to order from Amazon.co.uk. 

  there goes my source of Vinyl records (that cant be brought in NZ)  :(

Maybe someone should complain to the government.

Rikkitic:

Maybe someone should complain to the government.

 

I genuinely am just waiting for retailers to realise that many people will actually be better off with these changes than the current situation. Their is going to be faux outrage.

moulinette:

 

I just asked on their chat and this is the response I got from their customer service rep:

 

"As of 18 November, 2019, Amazon.co.uk will no longer accept orders for delivery to NZ, due to a change in NZ Goods and Services Tax (GST) legislation"

 

I just ran a search in Amazon UK's help section and came up with the following under International Delivery Restrictions:

"Due to Australian and New Zealand GST law, we are currently unable to ship physical items from Amazon.co.uk to New Zealand or Australian shipping addresses. Please check if Amazon.com.au or Amazon.com sells the item you would like to purchase, or choose a delivery address that is not in New Zealand or Australia to proceed with placing an order."

And I just got an email from them "Our Black Friday Sale is now on!" Couldn't they have chopped us off on Nov 30th!