Retail shops paying price as we buy overseas web items

Have you been tempted? Go on, own up ... I bet you have. Well, if you have the internet and the power of thought at your disposal at least.

I'm talking about internet shopping and, in particular, shopping overseas. It is a new El Dorado for Kiwis - a neo-cargo cult growing itself into our everyday lives.

The enticing sight of the internet shopping - "malls" of Ebay and many other (mainly Chinese) websites ... cheap goods galore.

There has been concern for a few years now about a shopper trying out, say, a tennis racquet at a local sports shop, taking advantage of the expert advice of the shop assistant for free, writing down the model number and then purchasing that item for a discount price from an online shop.

The retailer has to pay wages, costs like insurance, phone and electricity - plus huge rents for their downtown site, risk their house or more on bank guarantees on their business loan and suffer the life-shortening stresses on their health when it all turns to custard. Just to provide us all with a service - a service for which they hope to be paid.

Retailing is not for the fainthearted, and none of us deny them the right to make a dollar out of the services they provide.

Unfortunately, only those retailers who offer a unique service or exclusive goods may survive.

Of course, companies such as Telecom trained us to shop this way when they found they could make enormous profits on such things as cellphone peripherals. Seven or eight years ago a simple charging/data transfer cable for your cellphone might cost you upward of $200; today the equivalent thing sells for about $15 to $30.

The Government is looking at ways to ensure that when we bring in goods from overseas, we at least pay GST on their value. This, the retailers say, would help level up the playing field.

How can they compete fairly with those retailers who don't have the same cost structure as they do? And then, to add salt to the wound, not have to include GST in their prices?

At the moment, goods brought in from overseas only attract GST if their value exceeds $400 and this excludes most things we import, including the cellphones and other electronic knick-knacks on offer.

What is stopping the Government doing this is that it is just too hard. It would cost more to administer the GST payment than they would make out of it, so they don't do that sort of thing any more.

In any case, if you are tempted to shop online from, say, China, don't expect that cellphone you purchase for such a cheap price to still be working in three months ... or even three weeks. If it works at all.

And if it stops, it won't be like Chris walking into Mitre10 when his new impact driver stops working and being given another one. Oh no, these "retailers" are expert at not giving you your money back.

I can talk from bitter experience here. I have one faulty cellphone that they have not paid out on, and my daughter's cellphone was posted back in February and has yet to be even acknowledged.

Don't be fooled. If you are short of money, it is better to purchase quality second-hand in this country, than new consumer goods from China.