Thread: Amazon and Festool

Always love your posts Evan. glad you got around it

Dave TTC
Turning Wood Into Art

Hows the Aus post re director going?
There was that post ages ago that they were setting it up.

Yep. Noticed the same. In the past I got a lot of abrasives, ratchet clamps, vacuum dust bags etc from them.
Oh well, will have to use the mail forwarding services next time.
I do still support the local shops for Festool tool purchases though.
It is the company's right to do so. Remember they are only 1 of many companies that do this. If we do not like it we have the choice to vote with our wallets but we keep buying the Festool tools because of the quality and to me they just have great dust collection.
I have a suspicion that all the bragging on this forum of buying the Festool products from Amazon brought it to their attention. If it was not mentioned here it may have been different.
Les

Hi Evanism,

can you provide some details of the redirection service you use? I have been buying festool abrasives from Amazon direct, but it now seems like it's not possible any more.
Cheers,

ajw

HMM 1250 eagles converted to wallabies vs 2050 kangeroos. Nice profit!

Originally Posted by DaveTTC

Always love your posts Evan. glad you got around it

Dave TTC
Turning Wood Into Art

You can rely on me to be dramatic.

Apologies to all for my "bad words" that we're rightly edited out. Seems I had a brain fart, an apoplexy and a histrionic fit all at once... No doubt caused by my moral outrage at being so mercilessly gouged.

Such cognitive dissonance! I severely hate them for their retail price maintenance, usury pricing and stifling anti-free-market behaviours, but love the tools.

I'm going to have to meditate on this one.

I might need to apologise.

Its not only Festool, but it appears it's almost every tool made of metal, is magnetic, has a blade or a sharp edge.

Using my very unscientific testing process, I selected pretty much every tool, part or accessory I've bought over the last 3 years and every one of them are now excluded (even vitamins, patches and health goods are excluded).

There is almost zero logic as to what is allowed and what is not.

Either this is an Amazon style anti-Australian government revenge thing for questioning their exotic tax arrangements, or there are some interesting shenanigans going on in the background.....

-- Is amazon squeezing its sellers an extra fee to ship their stuff overseas? (and they say it isnt worth it!).
-- Is an amazon distribution centre opening here in Australia?
-- Are they sick to death of dealing with our pox-infected customs and/or hopelessly medieval AustPost?
-- Is it a demonstration of their economic might to our government? We're they threatened with some sort of Amazon Tax and decided to preemptively pull the pin on us?
-- Perhaps their OS distro deal blew up. I noticed that items I could ship when I wrote the first post can now not be shipped (the contagion is spreading)
-- or is it, in true American bastardry, that Amazon has taken financial positions in the leading postal redirectors?

So, while my florid diatribes about Festools pricing models might be blunted by my being slightly...well, wrong, it does appear there might be a deeper mystery going on here.

Keep us informed ... I'm interested

Dave TTC
Turning Wood Into Art

I found the same. I had a cart ready for purchase. As I am registered I can see if they ship the item to my address as soon as I click on the item. What was able to be shipped a few days before could no longer be shipped. So I bought the last few items that could be bought.
I agree, something weird is going on. There may be some sinister forces at work here.
Here's hoping Evanism and I do not disappear in the dark of night .
Les

I believe it to be restrictive trade practices on the part of the manufacturer. When the look at the Australian market they see the long tradition of ripping us of and they see $ signs. Sony I believe to be the worst where they change a 100% premium. You can occasionaly get brave resellers to supply on eBay but that is rare. Another case in point is Stihl who are evel on many levels. Not only because they chage way over the odds but engage in what the ACCC call restrictive trade practices. We ended up buying from a guy in Vic who imports Stihl chainsaws together with heavy machinery and resells them about 25% less than the products here. Microjig is another fine example of companies ripping of Australians. You pay about twice the privce in Australia for the same product off Amazon or eBay - no Australian shipping.

On the other hand I recently bought some folding tables for my Dewalt thicknesser from Amazon at a reasonable price so there are exceptions.

I suspect that Amazon US would be more than willing but the manufacturer refuses to supply if they ship to Australia.

I once had an argument with a JB salesman who talked in condemning terms of the "brown" market as if it was something bad. It is globalisation and a warning sign to manufacturers and resellers (yes you HN) stuck in the 19th C to open up to the modern global economy. Hey guys, it is the 21st C already.

I'll try to keep it on track, but this is what I know....

Originally Posted by Yanis

I believe it to be restrictive trade practices on the part of the manufacturer. When the look at the Australian market they see the long tradition of ripping us of and they see $ signs.

It's the elegance of capitalism at work. Charge what the market can bear...

I support it, but I don't support artificial trade restrictions where a reseller arbitrarily decides to block supply.

Australia is in for a long gruesome rececession and/or rapid inflation to equalise us internationally, but thats almost another arguement. Ill leave it with this question - How many lawn mowers (cars, table saws, screw drivers, candles) did one have to sell to buy a house in 1996 compared to 2016? Hmmmm? There is the problem. Dark days ahead.

Originally Posted by Yanis

Stihl who are evel on many levels. Not only because they chage way over the odds but engage in what the ACCC call restrictive trade practices.

The problem here is selective market gouging. Their practices are highly refined and particularly offensive. I agree they are on par with Festool, but Festool take the cake with Retail Price Maintenance.

Originally Posted by Yanis

Microjig is another fine example of companies ripping of Australians. You pay about twice the privce in Australia for the same product off Amazon or eBay - no Australian shipping.

I actually spoke with MicroJig! They are keen for reps and enthusiasts, but they have zero, repeat ZERO interest in Australia. We don't exist on their sales radar. They could not care less.

So, the restrictions on Amazon are not theirs, they are Amazons.

Originally Posted by Yanis

I once had an argument with a JB salesman who talked in condemning terms of the "brown" market as if it was something bad.

Market protectionism is an ugly look. The fact he was fearful is reason to look elsewhere - they know they are gouging. A good deal rewards both parties. I believe Kogan will continue tearing the market apart.

I've noticed the restrictions on Amazon are broadening, rapidly.

It's absolutely part of a broader plan. They have seen what Festool, Sthil and others can do and they want a cut of the action. I suspect they will introduce regional pricing, a.k.a geo-pricing, and localised distribution.

I've asked the question on their forums.

Perversely, I like the pricing the way it is. It makes things so expensive I either can't justify buying them so I find an alternative, or I buy them second hand. At least my bank account loves me for that!

A story about retail practices in Oz, I have told the story before but it good enough to repeat.

Shortly after I started Clearvue I had a phone call from a very prominent retailer of machinery and equipment in Australia. For an hour he tried to convince me that I was doing it all wrong and I should change my strategy. He maintained that it was too cheap and I was depriving the retailers of Australia the chance to make some money and I should be a wholesaler only. It shows a certain mentality I guess, jack up the price to the edge of what the market can stand and full speed ahead.

Originally Posted by Evanism

The great Aussie ripoff continues.

Looks like Amazon has been strong-armed into not shipping here.... everything that used to, no longer.

Went to order a new box of dominoes and nope. Tried some other things nope, nope, nope. Tried things I've ordered in the past... nope, nope, nope. All nope.

Evanism,

I've just gone thru the process of buying some vacuum veneering equipment and a few other items from Amazon.

I tried Amazon (USA) first, and found the same as you has - that many of the items I wanted were now not available for shipment to Australia, when they had been up until only a few weeks ago.

I was searching Amazon (USA) with the "Ships to Australia" box ticked, and was getting long lists of items displaying the words - "this item is eligible for shipping to Australia". But when you go into the detailed entry for each item, it then says that the "item does not ship to Australia".

I sent a complaint email to Amazon Support pointing out the inconsistencies in their search results. A few emails have gone back and forth in the last two days. Initially they tried to teach me how to search correctly on their web site. When I pointed out that I was using their recommended process and that I was still getting inconsistencies in shipping eligibility, they sat up and listened. The process got escalated a few times, as each respondent eventually said that they couldn't fix the inconsistencies, or explain them, and passed the problem up the line.

Eventually, I got to the Manager responsible for Amazon USA sales in the Oceania region, who rang me last night. She advised that the items don't ship to Australia, and that the statements in some search listing stating that "the item is eligible for shipping to Australia" were an error that Amazon were working on.

She went on to say that "the recent changes that made some goods no longer eligible to ship to Australia were imposed by the US Government in relation to some trade deal". The Manager didn't know any specific details about the "trade deal", as "that was something for the Corporate Legal Team to deal with". Her advice in the end was to try shopping thru the Amazon UK web site (www.amazon.co.uk), as she had checked and the items that I wanted were available ex Amazon UK for shipment to Australia. It's possible that some aspect of Australia's Free Trade Agreement with the USA may have come to bite us . Or maybe it's some sort of fall-out from the Australian Senate's recent enquiry into the taxation of big multi-nationals like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple.

It's certainly not a Festool only issue ! It seems to be an issue associated with lots of brands, even brands with no distributors in Australia. The small shop Vacuum Veneering supplies (or any brand) that I bought are unavailable in Australia. Other than Roarockit, the only Vacuum Veneering systems available in Australia are large industrial units; so I have no idea why small workshop shop sized vacuum veneering supplies would be impacted.

Anyway .....

I've ordered the goods I need from AmazonUK instead. Freight was a bit less from the UK, but is expected to take about a week to 10 days longer to deliver. What I paid through AmazonUK for this order was roughly the same as I would have paid from AmazonUSA.

I'm not a Festool user, but I did check the availability of various sized domino slip tenons, and the various sized domino cutters, and they are available for shipment to Australia from AmazonUK. But as for price, I don't know what they cost in Australia, so I have no idea whether the UK sourced dominos are cost effective or not.

RoyG