great news for LDS owners!!

[theslyfox01]

Local diveshop owners,

are you tired of training open water students (after they spend 2 hours talking to you about the good and bad points of the dive gear you stock in your store) who then come to pool dive #1 decked out in their new 'superhappycheapinternetscubastore.com' gear, which was 'such a bargain - all you new O.W divers should buy from them!'

Well - heres the solution to all your woes.

Come live in Australia! A developed western country that has a wealth of scuba divers for your customer base, as well as a huge amount of places around the coast to choose from that suit your diving demographic, and yet there is not ONE, not ONE online divestore that you have to compete with, for some reason the relaxed lifestyle down here has left everyone thinking the only practical purpose for the internet is to get live updates on cricket scores when the boss won't let you watch TV at work..

The LDS guys down here don't know how easy they have it compared to you poor guys in North America ut:

So come on down, I doubt anyones going to wake-up for some time, afterall we haven't even got an equivilant to amazon.com and that was I assume around along time before the first online dive store.

 

[Scubaroo]

theslyfox01 once bubbled...
...and yet there is not ONE, not ONE online divestore that you have to compete with...

Yeah, the one online divestore Australia DID have was shut down by the distributers for undercutting LDS prices, and from what I heard, that violated almost every consumer/competition law in the country yet nothing was done. The aussie dollar is so weak, an entry level set of gear (noname brand BC, reg) was going to set me back $1800-$2000 at the store I certified at.

When I eventually move back to oz, I'm going to fill a shipping container up with as many manifolds, wings and regulators as I can afford - I won't have to buy another thing for 10 years

 

[ianr33]

Could you not just buy stuff from leisurepro et al in the US?? The shipping would be more expensive but it would probably still be worth it

 

[DiveTub]

ianr33 once bubbled...
Could you not just buy stuff from leisurepro et al in the US?? The shipping would be more expensive but it would probably still be worth it

It is until you get hit with Duty and Import tax

 

[dvleemin]

Sydney_Diver once bubbled...


It is until you get hit with Duty and Import tax

Yup, no NAFTA down there. (or should I say Down Under )

 

[Dectek]

Don't aliens have to prove that they are going to do a job that nobody in Oz wants to do now. I heard that they don't want to give Aussie jobs away to foreigners.

What kind of import tax do you guys have to pay? Every once in a while I ship things down there and mark them as gifts and use the last name of the recipient as the last name on my return address. I may be wrong but I thought that would negate the import tax.