Australian FS price rise

I have just received the May FS catalogue, and on reading the fine print found that from 1 July there will be a 10% increase in prices and postage due to the addition of GST.
If you are planning any purchases, buy before 1 July or pay 10% more.
Books are not exempt from GST (VAT equivalent in Australia), so as well as paying about 15% more than fair exchange rate when purchasing in Australian dollars (we are not allowed to buy in Sterling), we will now be paying an extra 10% from 1 July, or about 27% more than those in the UK.

>1 wcarter:

May I ask-is this a 10% increase in the GST rate on books or is the tax being extended to books for the first time?

>2 gmurphy:
No, GST has always been applied to books sold within Australia, but until now books valued less than A$1000 could be imported without without GST.
Local booksellers felt this was unfair competition, so now it is being applied to all imports. 😢

As I understand it, the lowering of the GST threshold for Low Value Goods has been postponed until July 1 2018 so it should not apply.
On another note about the discrepancy in exchange rate, I was flicking through the May catalogue and there are a few I would like but I just find the prices slightly on the obscene side now. They 'feel' about 20% too high - and I understand it is to cover additional postage charges. For example, the Fermour set seems reasonable at around $130 and I would pop it in the cart but at $155 something in my brain cannot justify it. And, ironically, I am fortunate enough to be able to claim books I buy as tax deductible but this excess has moved my FS purchases from a bi-monthly spot of self-indulgence into an extravagance that I cannot square with myself. I wonder if others feel the same? Last year, I purchased only about 10% of my usual annual amount and this year, not one item has passed the financial taste test.

>4 Bibliogasm:
The FS May catalogue fine print definitely says 2017.
It would have been nice to have an extra year of cheaper buying.

Perhaps they can be appealed to - I expect as they went to press with the catalogue, the GST for LVG was a firm government proposal but last minute lobbying by eBay, Amazon etc persuaded them to postpone the decision until 2018 and it might even be kicked into the long grass even then.

>1 wcarter:

Warwick

With regards to the pricing differential (disadvantage) for Australian,US,Canadian customers,have you ever received any reasonable response from the folks at FS?

>4 Bibliogasm:

Hi,

I suspect they may have this wrong as stated by Bibliogasm.

As far as I can tell still nothing has been agreed to... and it's June 2017. If it is to be introduced in 1at July 2017, I don't think many people will be ready for this.
Something that was stated by Joe Hockey in the 2015 budget (?)
Also there is the issue of import duties and fees for goods over $1000 with GST on the total value including postage, duties and fees (Does limit buying the Folio LEs, more like +20-25%) !

Why is Folio compelled to do the government's dirty work for them? No other publisher I buy from outside Canada deducts GST at source, and Canadian customs has never applied it at the border. I could see the point of it when FS had a Canadian subsidiary, but as far as I know they no longer do.

>1 wcarter:

Warwick as a GP, should should know better than to raise the BPs of your compatriots!

> It is not all bad news. A friend in New Zealand who collects Folios emails to say that, as a result of FS collecting Australian VAT, New Zealand has now become Rest of the World with prices set in sterling. He is delighted.

>7 gmurphy:
I have lobbied the FS repeatedly about being able to pay in Sterling, including a personal letter to Lady Gavron, but have had no response whatsoever to all my queries, by email and snail mail.

>11 Felixholt:
Thats great news for the New Zealanders - now it is just three countries that they discriminate against!

>8 peto11:
If it really is 2018, all the better, but will the FS add the 10% as from 1 July 2017? Only placing an order will let us know. I think I will place an extra order just before the deadline just in case.

>4 Bibliogasm: If the higher prices for USA, Canada and Australia were just due to postage then LEs would be priced at a par with the UK. They're not! The FS charges 20-30% more because they feel this will give them more revenue. If they lose less than 20% of sales, then they are probably right. They are NOT just passing on higher costs!

>12 wcarter:

Hi,

The Folio Society maybe is a little preemptive on the fine print on taxing the Australians (on top of the Folio Australian Charges).

The Treasury Laws Amendment (GST Low Value Goods) Bill 2017 hasn't even passed the Australian Lower house yet and given how the Senate behaves nowadays, the crossbench will need a couple of months to grandstand on the issues...
(Unsure when it is before Parliment again) The start date of 1 July 2017 looks very ambitious even by some miracle it passes the Hose of Reps. and Senate in a couple of weeks and they expect everyone to update their systems in a day/week. ...and then they need to expain how it works with import duties and fees !

I was concerned about this a year ago, and by 'concerned' I meant that I intuitively felt that the prices charged to the Axis of Overseas Evil were excessive in regards to the prevailing exchange rate. Accordingly I emailed FS and the answer they supplied seemed reasonable - they set and hedge against FX rates a year in advance so can't change it midstream. Fair do's I thought...and then this year the so-called advance calculation was not in any way commensurate with the prevailing rate. As counter-intuitive as this sounds, I then alighted on a handful of wonderful second-hand online stores with sensible postage rates and have been ordering bucketfulls of pristine secondhand books that are usually difficult to source and reading to my heart's content. I now measure many of my desired FS purchases by the number of secondhand nearly new TBRs I can purchase - the formula now works out to about 30 to 1. I somehow feel I am being more green about my consumption but the inner capitalist in me rages against a fine line that I think FS has irredemiably crossed.

>15 Bibliogasm: Easy solution to "we guessed wrong on the exchange rate": let us pay in pounds sterling. Boom.

Paying a huge mark-up has been hard to swallow. It has severely impacted my purchases direct from the FS, and has increased my purchases from Abe and Ebay.

Absolutely - that would solve it immediately. The only reason I whinge is that I'm really anxious that if the premium has had the same effect on other people's purchases as it has had on mine, then FS will rapidly dwindle and die. But I'm not so concerned that I am prepared to pay the excess to keep it going!

As previously stated on previous threads in previous years, the FS milks Australian Faddicts for everything they have got.

There simply has never been a reasoned argument other than 'I want to make as much money out of you lot as possible because we can'.

And as I have come to realise that is true, in a cold economic line of reasoning.

But I have always considered FS to be more than that, probably as a result of being in contact with their excellent front line customer service staff.

All one can do is vote with one's feet. I have, for now.

I emailed the FS anout this and following are my email and the response so far:-

MY EMAIL
Can you confirm that you will be adding 10% GST to all Australian sales from 1 July 2017, as mentioned in the order form accompanying your May catalogue.
My understanding was that the import GST legislation was not coming into effect until 1 July 2018.

FS RESPONSE
Many thanks for your e-mail and your support of the Folio Society.
I can confirm that the Folio powers-that-be are double-checking this. However, word from the Australian Tax Office is that the GST legislation will come into effect in 2017.

I'm pretty sure the ATO have blinked on this issue around 2017 implementation, especially after eBay threatened to pull the plug.

The Folio Society have long talked absolute codswallop on their Aussie pricing. Anyone with half an hour can search back through LT and find huge threads on the issue.

I've had emails from them in the past that justified their massive markups on nothing more than 'expensive credit card transaction costs'.

LOL

Irony.

The Treasury Laws Amendment (GST Low Value Goods) Bill 2017 is being debated today in the Australian Senate having already passed the House of Representatives.
If the bill is passed today or tomorrow, there will be a 10% GST payment added to all goods and services supplied by overseas firms that have Australian sales in excess of A$75,000.
The Greens have one amendment, but otherwise it seems likely that it will pass, and the legislation will come into effect from 1 July.
In other words, FS books will cost 10% more after 1 July this year making the price differential between the UK and Australian market even greater.
Purchases through eBay and Amazon will also be affected, but not purchases from small secondary booksellers (unless the book value exceeds A$1000).
In other words, if you plan any book buying in the next few months, do it in the next two weeks before prices rise.

>21 wcarter:

yes, now looks ominous, certainly moved quickly, wouldnt want to be a systems person. Wonder if ebay will geo-block as threatened ?

maybe the Folio Society could move the Summer Sale forward a week :)

Amazon will be here in Australia soon.

Cat amongst the pigeons.

>18 LesMiserables:

I wouldn't call it cold for a company that's bleeding money. They have to make up their substantial losses somewhere.

>24 MobyRichard:

But why Australia, when the price of living here is way more expensive than the UK and US?

Don't answer that.

Anyway...

>10 LesMiserables: >21 wcarter:

This may be a very clever strategy by the Folio Society to increase sales, especailly from those who read the fine print on Catalogues or read these posts

There are a couple more amendments from the Senate

I may be wrong, but one is to change the start period to 1 July 2018. If I have read it correctly and if the amendments are passed, they are certainly cutting it fine.

>26 peto11:

If it's a clever strategy, it's an ongoing and long lived one!
As a disenchanted and long disgruntled dismembered antipodean I have witnessed just about every possible kind of leverage applied to the AUSFAD group.

>26 peto11:
You were right. Last minute amendmens have given us a 12 month reprieve.
I have received another email from the FS in response to my query :-

Dear Warwick

Thanks for getting back to me. It sounds like there's been a postponement for a year (according to our Finance team, anyway). I'm hoping this hasn't come too late for the latest order forms going out, but it sounds like a little good news at least!

Best wishes

Andrew Wagstaff
Customer Service Manager
The Folio Society

>28 wcarter:

Thanks Warwick.

Good to know.

Just noticed this due to having to place a GBP order...

On the UK site (Non-Sale pricing)...The LE Canterbury Tales is £20 dearer than the LE Troilus and Criseyde.

whilst

On the AU site (Non-Sale pricing)...The LE Canterbury Tales is $200 cheaper than the LE Troilus and Criseyde.

Okay, so we have no copyright issues or other such international financial spanners in the work here. This is a pricing decision pure and simple.

What on earth can they be thinking. In Australia this would be what is considered a price gouge. Or have I missed something?

There is no logic in the FS overseas pricing, only discrimination.