On 11 Feb 2004 at 18:58, graywolf wrote: > I find it interesting that the article blames the manufactures, and not he > Austrailian importers. I guess you guys don't like to admit you are cheating > each other. I am willing to bet that the cameras cost the local importer exactly > the same (subject to quanity discounts) in the US as they do in Australia, or > any place else. One of our advantages is that the US has no Excise/Import Tax on > cameras since we no longer have a domestic industry to protect.
As someone else said Sony was the focus of the article and they are the manufacturer and importer/distributor however the gist of the article is that regular Aussies are only just waking up the the fact that someone is shafting them (and probably has been for years). The biggest problem here is that our market size has limited the viability of distributors hence one distributor such as CR Kennedys handles competitive product lines and without suggesting collusion between distributors prices have always been high across the board. The only piece of photo kit that I've purchase locally in the last five years or so was my *ist D and that was only because of my apprehension regarding reliability and repair/warranty response coupled with the fact the Kennedys offered to match overseas pricing for this body (which they did, a day before the first big US discount of course) Cheers, Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications/ Pentax user since 1986, PDMLer since 1998
