Amazon now charging postage to New Zealand. Boo Hiss.
Argghhhhhhhhhhhh.
The “trial” that they were doing which gave us free postage to New Zealand if we spent over £25 has ended. With bugger all notice. Which is really stupid, because I would have put a bloody great big order if they had given me some notice.
Now though, they will have to wait till I can afford to buy a load of books and the postage.
Or we de-camp to Book Depository, which a lot of people already use because they always have free postage to New Zealand, and similar prices to Amazon.
Funnily enough in the weekend Dom Post there is an article about “The Battle of the High Street”. (Not online I’m afraid). In it the owner of Unity Books in Wellington notes that
customers who buy books from Internet giant Amazon are often only saving the equivalent of a cup of coffee.
To which I can only say that this is utter hogwash. We regularly save half the cost of what it would have if we bought in a shop if not more. When I can buy a Novel for $12 at amazon, or pay $25 in an NZ shop, how exactly does that saving equate to a cup of coffee? Even with the increase in coffee prices.
And the more expensive the book, the bigger the savings. Hubby received a copy of Dilbert 2.0 for Christmas last year. It cost £50 from Amazon (just over $100). It costs over $300 here. That’s a lot of damn coffees.
A recent and topical example would be the Art Of The Hobbit.
- $70 in most New Zealand bookshops.
- $60 if you go to the Bargain Basement Whitcoulls Shop on Featheston St (ooh – let me get me coat!)
- $45 (£23.33 with shipping) at Amazon.
- $37.97 at Book Depository with free shipping (they price in NZD)
- $37.83 at Fishpond (a NZ company, but shipped in from the UK).
The difference between the cheapest and most expensive:
- $32.17.
That’s about 8 coffees worth saved by skipping the high st and buying online.
Either way – even with the postage – it was always cheaper to buy from Amazon than from a New Zealand company. It still is. But we will give Book Depository a go and see how that works out. I still will not pay New Zealand prices for books.
Attempting to use the Whitcoulls “sale”
We had a shopping list of about 100 items: books and DVD’s that we need to choose from for Christmas presents. We will generally be buying from Amazon.co.uk to make the most of the exchange rate, and the fact that books and DVD’s are hideously expensive in New Zealand.
But Whitcoulls are running a sale at the moment. You need to have a copy of the “Pick Your Price” vouchers (available at the entrance of the store). And unfortunately, it was the last day of the “sale” today. Not that you would be missing much.
As you can see – 50% off a single fiction paperback. Which is great – becuase 50% off means you actually pay about as much for the book as you would at Amazon. Often – that even takes into account the shipping fees with the exchange rate working in our favour. And the limit of one book means you just have keep going to the checkout or work in a tag team. And 50% of Greetings cards – which included individual Christmas cards actually did make quite a saving.
BUT.
Theres a caveat in the stores that says anything with a “Hot Price” sticker on is excluded from using these vouchers. OK – so not necessarily an issue, as its already on sale. Right?
Wrong.
We found a book we needed. Price $42.99 for a Trade Paperback. Same book in Hardback is £11.20 at amazon, or about $24.00. So 50% off isn’t bad, bearing in mind that we save the shipping fee. But Wait – it’s a HOT PRICE!
Of $39.99!
So Whitcoulls have “slashed” a whole $3.00 of the price, so you cant actually use your 50% voucher.
And then tried to justify it to us with the whole “It’s to do with the fair trading act” line, which I personally don’t really give two hoots about. We really don’t want to know WHY you are doing it, and don’t really care – we will just carry on buying from Amazon and getting our books for a reasonable price.
So out of almost 100 items we were looking for, how many did we find that were cheaper?
2 (Two).
The Amazon elves are going to busy again this year for us.
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Upgrades to Avalon’s Blog done :)
Filed under: The Book and Website, The Family Sponsorship Saga
Hubby has reminded me just how much he loathes coding – and was only calmed down my copious amounts of Tea, Chocolate and Top Gear yesterday while he battled to do the things I wanted him to do to the blog.
Mostly it was a case of de-cluttering and tidying things up. It’s amazing how this thing has evolved, and as it does so, widgets get added, things move, I join more blog directories, and before you know it – theres no room for me to write anything anymore!
The main changes are:
- The Family Sponsorship Saga posts have all moved up to the top menu, so they aren’t taking up room on the side.
- I’ve created one picture of the Book with both Book and E-Book prices on to create more room and we have a smaller Buy Now button.
- Ive moved the Really Useful Immigration Links into the Links page, rather than having them sitting with the BlogRolls.
- Ive tidied up and shorted the list of Categories, to make it easier to find posts.
But the main alteration is that the Amazon Store is now up and running, and can be found on the top Menu. This is something I always wanted to do, because I spend so much of my own time devouring books, and this is a great way to have a list of all the books that helped me on my journey – both to emigrate and to become a budgeting freak. Ill be adding books from time to time, but theres a pretty good starting list there: both books about New Zealand and books about personal finance. And yes, I will get paid if you click through from the Amazon Store page and you buy anything during that session. It takes you through to Amazon, and you will be buying through Amazon, not through me.
I get about 5% on any purchases you make, so please feel free to make use of the store and help me cover the cost of running this website.
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