• Home
  • News
  • Business
  • Amazon cuts Australia from U.S. site

Amazon cuts Australia from U.S. site

By Kristopher Fraser

loading...

Scroll down to read more

Business

Amazon Inc. has announced that Australian consumers will now have to use the company's Australian website rather than the U.S. one beginning July 1 in order to avoid a new sales tax on certain imported goods. The news was first reported by Business of Fashion.

Amazon has said that it would redirect Australians to their newly launched Australian site once the 10 percent Goods and Services Tax was applied to imported goods worth less than 100 Australian dollars from the start of the 2018-2019 financial year.

"While we regret any inconvenience this may cause customers, we have had to assess the workability of the legislation as a global business with multiple international sites," an Amazon spokesman said in an email to BoF.

The good news for Amazon is that this will help drive traffic to their Australian website, which launched last December, but drew criticism for noncompetitive prices and a small product range. Amazon Australia offers 60 million products in 23 categories, compared to the usual half a billion products in many other countries.

The Goods and Services Tax could also benefit Australian retailers who were having trouble competing with online shopping because low-cost imported items were often cheaper to order online than buy in local stores.

Approximately 4.6 million adult Australians visited Amazon's U.S. site in November 2017, the month before its Australian website went live, according to consumer metrics company The Nielsen Co.

Of course, the move to direct consumers to the Australian site only was not meant without backlash. Customers are already complaining that they will be facing loss of access to important products. To soften the backlash, Amazon has offered customers a 20 dollar gift card to amazon.com.au.

Although the Australian government aims to make the playing field more equal for all retailers, they have created a lot of unhappy customers.

photo: via amazon.com.au
Amazon
Australia