Amazon Prime has launched in Australia and already there have been comparisons made with Prime in other areas of the world and complaints that it’s not good enough. Amazon Australia Prime, costing $59 per year is offering free delivery within two business days in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and a few other cities. It also offers free delivery for goods valued at over $49 from Amazon.com.
The problem is Australians are looking at next day, same day or within the hour services in other countries around the world and thinking they’re being hard done by which they are. What they’re forgetting though is other countries also didn’t have instant Amazon Prime delivery gratification from Day 1. Amazon will doubtless build additional warehouses in the US as demand for their products increases.
It’s worth remembering that Australia is roughly the same land mass as the US, but there are 325 million people in the US and only 24 million in Australia so it’s much more sparsely populated, another factor for the slower deliveries.
What Australians should really be worried about is that the purchasing from Amazon.com isn’t as good as it sounds, or won’t be soon. Amazon are about to ban Australians from buying internationally as they can’t figure out how to handle the new Australian GST (sales tax). Amazon’s solution is to ringfence Australia and only allow them to buy from Amazon Australia of the Global Store through Amazon Australia. This is a much reduced set of products compared to those on Amazon.com and a reduced product set generally means less selection and higher prices.
Australians have a legitimate complaint about Amazon Prime, but I don’t think it’s the two day delivery they should be complaining about. There’s a huge gap in the market for a freight forwarder to enable purchasing on Amazon.com and other sites around the world and shipping the goods to Australia on behalf of consumers. If Amazon won’t let Australians purchase there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone else purchasing on their behalf.
Or just stop at eBay Australia, eBay will let you buy from any country you wish to.
3 Responses
Amazon made a mistake by not paying gst and banning Australia from purchasing through its global network because that is what Australians used Amazon for, buying things that you could not get through an Australian store.
Amazon only had one warehouse in Australia so 2 day delivery is pretty good. What Amazon needs to do is build a network of 6 or 7 warehouse which would increases the number of products available and also reduce delivery time. Each warehouse with robots costs about $100 million so I presume Amazon is reluctant at the moment to make that kind of investment. Australia has a large land mass but only a small population of 24 million people so profitability for Amazon is pretty limited.
Amazon when it expands internationally should look at count does with large populations such as Indonesia, Phillipines, Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand, Turkey, Iran, Russia etc. In that way Amazon’s investment into a largely populated country has the potential for good growth with an increased chance of profitabilty.
Amazon’s problem is too little selection of goods because it only has one warehouse in Australia. It was foolish of Amazon not to pay gst and then ban Australians from purchasing internationally.
I had an E-mail this morning from Amazon AU saying they will now be charging GST for items sold and delivered from overseas if they are over $1000 so doesn’t look like they are banning it now!
Also…delivery in Australia shocking and very slow so 2 days is a no brainer…that is a huge win and they won’t be complaining about not getting 1 day…just amazed they can get it in 2 days!