#purchasing discussion

(GST = Goods and Services Tax. In Australia, all taxes are included in the final price we pay, although for a long time small purchases--under $1000--made internationally were exempt from GST. From July 1, this will no longer be the case.)

If there’s something you’ve been wanting to buy online from an international (non-Australian) retailer, I’d consider buying it before July 1, just to save yourself 10%. Given that buying from US-based stores has only gotten more expensive this year with the recent shipping changes, most of us can’t afford a 10% increase on top of already-high shipping fees and dollar conversion.

If there’s something you want to buy from the Amazon US store that isn’t stocked on the AU store (which only has a fraction of the range) I would also buy it before July 1. I know there’s a lot of chewables and various stim toys, including sometimes out-of-print Tangles, that really only have Amazon US listings, so please make sure you get anything you can’t live without now!

I hope that eBay doesn’t force us to buy only from the eBay AU site, which, again, is more restricted than the US site (although not as badly as Amazon, thankfully). When I find information on this, and any other information from retailers about how they’re going to handle this additional tax, I will provide updates.

The first--where I didn’t screw up--is that I filed a missing item claim. The seller has gotten back to me and offered to send a replacement (good) but asked me to close the case (bad). Do not do this. It means that you’re then relying on the seller to come through with the replacement or refund, and if they don’t or it gets lost in the mail, you’ve got no ability to make another claim and get your item. Because this is an international purchase, if the item is lost and replaced or merely delayed, it’s going to arrive after my PayPal window closes. If I close the eBay claim, I’m reliant on the seller and the postal system. No, thanks.

It seems mean, because having a claim open is not good for the seller, but do not close it until you have your item. Do not. I sent a message thanking them for their replacement but advising that I wouldn’t close the case, so we’ll see what happens.

(In my case, I bought two items from the seller; I received only one of them.)

The second, where I did screw up from ignorance, is really odd, because I’d never have thought this to happen. I got a beret in the mail (a clothing item I’d never wear or buy) but the customs declaration said “toy”. I found the eBay tracking number on the parcel, compared it to my incoming listings and found the source, took a photo of the parcel with tracking number highlighted and sent the seller a message saying that they sent the wrong thing and I’d like a replacement, please.

They sent me a message saying it’s not their item, that I made a mistake and I should wait for mine to arrive because it’s en-route, and it sure looks that way today--because they changed the eBay tracking number on my purchase listing to a new number.

(The two numbers are so wildly different that there is no way I would have mistaken them for the same one yesterday. No way at all.)

If you’re in this situation, where you get the wrong thing and you’re sending the seller a message, screencap the tracking number on your purchase listing before sending the message. Because I didn’t know they could change it this way, I never thought to screencap it as evidence, and now I have to apologise for making a mistake I didn’t make ... or accuse the seller of changing the tracking number despite having no proof that they did. I’m going to go for the first option because my pain is so bad right now and I don’t need drama, but this is not an ideal buying experience.

I honestly can’t think why they’d do this; I don’t see how pretending the mistake wasn’t made is useful to anyone. If the seller had sent an “oops, sorry, resending right now” message, I wouldn’t have minded at all. I’ve never said anything bad about a seller who’s fixed a mistake because things happen, and nor would I.

(I will say that I am assuming that the new tracking number means the item has been resent, and will let folks know if this isn’t the case.)

pink-rainbow-sparkles replied to your post “Australians will be restricted to buying things only from the Amazon...”

Argh. My partner lives in the US so I'm probably just going to ask them to forward more parcels for me and I'm still incredibly frustrated. There's a lot of mail forwarding services between australia and the US, but they add $20-$40 and up to each delivery, which is going to put things completely out of reach for most of us.

Yeah. I don’t think the government realises that the things we’re buying online is because they’re either not available locally or not affordable locally, and this isn’t going to do anything to push us back to local retailers--no, wait, that’s not right. Forgive me, because I’m being far too kind here. The government knows we’re buying things unavailable locally at affordable prices, and rather than do something about that, it decides it’ll just go for its cut and claim to be doing it to support local retailers ... while, at the same time, provoking international retailers to reduce the ranges of items to which we have access in response, which was the problem that caused so much of our international purchases in the first place!

According to this article, eBay, Etsy and Alibaba aren’t going to geoblock Australian buyers, so we’ll still have access to international/non-Australian sellers. If eBay can arrange for tax collection, it seems to me that Amazon can as well, but we all know just how much Amazon doesn’t care about its customers or employees. I’m sure they’re happy not bothering about a small market like Australia (especially given how long it took them to bother about us in the first place).

There’s already articles out about getting a VPN and using a mail forwarding service (although you’ll still pay the GST via customs) for buying items not available locally or too highly priced locally from Amazon US, but as you say, most of us just can’t justify the added extra costs for mail forwarding. Or even just getting something shipped to a friend who ships it to you--that’s an added shipping cost in there you’ve still got to pay.

If the government wants us to spend money locally, it needs to be looking at making local prices more affordable (not the massive differences between local and global prices), helping vendors increase their ranges and decreasing Australia Post’s ridiculous local shipping rates. Most of us would love to not wait weeks for items to arrive from overseas; most of us would gladly pay a little bit more to get an item in a couple of days from an Australian seller. We just don’t want to pay double or triple (plus shipping) like we’re currently doing right now.

Yes and no, depending on the seller. They can be real and they can be fake. As far as I’m aware, the only currently in-print real single-colour Tangles are the metallics and the red sample Tangle Jr Fuzzy, but there are absolutely still older single colour Tangles floating about. Additionally, there’s all the promotional companies that have some licensing deal with Tangle Creations. I don’t know if they’re made in the same warehouse as branded stock or it’s something akin to the deal Zuru made with Antsy Labs, but most of the companies I checked out here in Australia (unfortunately, nobody offered free samples) made a point of now saying their promotional Tangles are real, not imitation.

(That Stimtastic’s Tangle Jrs were reportedly more fragile makes me think it’s more akin to the Zuru situation, and those promotional Tangles aren’t made by Tangle Creations, hence differing quality whilst not being knock-offs because licensing. But I do not know for sure; I’m just engaging in my usual wild conjecture because I find this interesting. I could be incredibly wrong.)

That’s why I said there are exceptions to all my how to pick a fake rules, because all of them do have exceptions, and it can be confusing.

As a general rule, the seller will indicate to you if an item is real or not.

So. Say you see a fabulous single-colour Tangle on a site - somewhere like eBay or Amazon. Awesome. First thing to do is see who’s selling it - the eBay seller or the third-party retailer on Amazon. What you’re looking for is the name of a known seller of old and out of print branded product, like Star Magic, The Learning Shop, Toys For Hands or Tink n’ Stink. These stores, as far as I’m aware, don’t sell fakes: they’re educational, game or OT stores/companies with a reputation to uphold. Their descriptions will often give you information about what they sell in good, clear English. They’ll be stocking other items that have good descriptions, appropriate pricing and professional stock photos - if everything else they’re selling looks real, and everything is priced consistently for that item, chances are high their single-coloured Tangles are real as well.

I’ll note that descriptions may or may not reference Tangle Creations, but if they do, that’s also a good sign of real stock. Photos with the item packaged (which the imitations can’t show because that crosses even more copyright lines) and showing the Tangle Creations logos and design is also another good sign of real/branded stock.

(Many sellers overprice, of course, but if the pricing is consistent for that seller’s storefront, overpricing isn’t indicative of anything to worry about, save for your own wallet.)

If you don’t know if the seller is a reputable dealer or not, and the seller’s storefront and description doesn’t give you enough information, Google. (I could complain here about how eBay doesn’t let you link to a third-party website on your profile.) You’ll quickly find if it’s the eBay or Amazon storefront of a reputable third-party store. This post discusses the signs of a reputable online dealer, if you need help in evaluating a website.

I’d be pretty safe in considering anything on Wish or AliExpress fake, no matter its colour. On Amazon, most things are real. eBay is trickiest, so I’d be checking price, the stock photos for any sign of gaps between the links, the product description (for good, well-written, informative descriptions) and the seller.

I’ll note that with fidget cubes, this is thrown out the window. Don’t use this post for knock-off fidget cubes! A great many stim toy and OT stores are selling fake fidget cubes under a variety of brand names, and for some reason there doesn’t seem to be any need to keep to branded product. (For this reason, if you’re after real fidget cubes, look to see if the descriptions contain reference to Zuru, Antsy Labs or both.) For Tangles, though, and most other toys that aren’t spinners (the patent on spinners was released) I haven’t yet seen a reputable dealer sell imitation product (and there’s many good copyright reasons for this, especially if they’re based in Western countries with firm copyright laws) because there’s no licensing associated with the imitation Tangles. So that, for me, would be the best and firmest indication.

(I’ll mention here, of course, that knock-off Tangles are absolutely as imitation as the fidget cube, are design theft, and are taking money from the creator. No judgement on this point, of course; we need to do what suits our situation as stimmers, and I don’t want anyone on this blog shaming anyone else for their purchasing choices. I’ve bought several fakes, as you know, but I also make sure to buy and keep buying a few real Tangles between them. I know not everyone can do that. But they are theft in the same way the fidget cubes and many other cheap knock-offs are theft.)

I hope that helps you some, anon. Unfortunately, it isn’t a simple, clear-cut answer, but checking out the seller usually gives you a good indication of real or fake.

It’s the problem of living in a country with a (comparatively) small population.

[TL;DR: Australia has a much higher minimum wage, which results in much higher prices for goods and services that aren’t subsidized by the government. This isn’t such a terrible thing, but having to pay high shipping costs on everything is what really hurts us, in my opinion (as a toy collector and stim toy buyer who has been buying things online for about fifteen years).]

Don’t get me wrong - we have a much higher minimum income than US folks (which I’ll use as the comparison point for ease of conversation). A lot of that is countered by the fact that we also have a much higher cost of living than US folks. In many ways it’s better here (health care, education, social protections) but in one of the ways it’s worse is the cost of food, games, clothes, toys. Things are usually double or more than double the US cost, depending on the item. Part of this is due to differences in the dollar; part of this is due to the cost of importing things; part of this is because a smaller market means fewer sales so things have to be priced higher to make the same amount of profit (and this is why not everything even makes it to Australia); and part of this is because it’s the norm so this stuff isn’t questioned by the consumer base.

Additionally, most of our goods and services contain a 10% GST (goods and services tax) built into the item cost; we don’t pay taxes on top. I know that can make things a little less expensive when compared to US purchases, depending on the kinds of local taxes added on top of the item price.

(This isn’t an Australia-exclusive problem, though. Not even close. Many European countries also suffer the same difficulty of paying double or triple locally what an item costs in the US, and I suspect many places in the world endure this as well.. Additionally, since buying from overseas became prominent in the last fifteen years, the difference has decreased some. Items aren’t quite as ridiculously overpriced as they used to be.)

This actually wouldn’t be so bad on its own, because, like I said, higher minimum income. Where it gets rough is either the internal shipping costs or the need to import from overseas (because so many of the cool things marketed for a US-audience don’t quite make it over here - only items that sell really well tend to be accessible to us, save for specialist online stores). We have less ability to walk into a store and find things (although that has also improved in the last ten years; the ability to see what’s going on in another country via online interactions has resulted in stores upping their game to order in “trendy” items like spinners more quickly) and that necessitates shipping.

Australia Post has a long and wonderful (sarcasm) history of making any kind of online purchasing ridiculous, and this is where it hurts part-time-working and disabled folks, because our minimum income covers the doubled-cost of the item, but it doesn’t really cover paying the item cost again or more to ship it. (Again, because the population is smaller, prices need to be higher to make the same kind of profit, and Australia Post has been struggling in various ways for a long time.) The advent of online buying has just made shipping more expensive, not less, and it can be cheaper to ship from the US to Australia, depending on the item, than it is to ship within Australia. Absurd, right?

It’s why many Aussies (because I know I’m not the only one) are so enthralled with free shipping eBay and Banggood listings. Free shipping makes such a difference! It’s also why I talk so much about offline sources, because I know I can’t afford to pay shipping, especially for inexpensive stim toys.

Thank you, anon. Most Aussies are dealing with the knowledge of the different cost prices; we see it every time we go online. It’s a harder thing for US folks in particular to see, as most listings are in USD and directed at US consumers. So I really do appreciate people who take the time to think about how different the buying experience is in other countries, and understand why we complain about shipping and Australia Post and the prices of things. (I really can’t write a resource post by an Aussie asker without discussing this.) I suspect that my constant talking about these sorts of things can get tiresome for some of my followers, but it’s the reality for many international stimmers, and I appreciate folks’ patience and understanding.