BBTS no-longer allowed to sell Lego to Australia.

So I got this in my email the other day:

Dear Nam,

LEGO has informed us that we may only ship LEGO products to addresses within the USA. We cannot ship products to any other countries. We are extremely sorry for this problem, but we have to cancel all orders for LEGO products with a shipping address outside the USA. LEGO has many retailers and distributors around the world, so hopefully you will be able to find the products you want locally. We again apologize for this problem, but we must comply with their rules.
--
Sincerely,
BBTS.

So is there another online store that people know of here that is good for importing LEGO at cheaper prices than local retail? Don't want to pay twice the price for a Lego Batcave

bleh i bought that on ebay from america a month ago but it fell through and had to get a paypal refund. so annoyed. I really wanted a set.

That sucks dude

Wow, first thundercats now LEGO, what do they have against Australia?

Damn, another USA only product.
Guess Lego know how overpriced their products are outside of the USA and have moved to restrict.

As a result - Lego doesn't get anymore $ from me

That doesn't surprise me, as the foreign-owned toy companies make a lot of money from their official outlets in other countries. More money per unit is siphoned back to the head office, than the money they make per unit in their own country.
In the graph I put together using one class of Transformers as an example, it showed that US Hasbro makes about $3 per Deluxe profit when sold in America, while they make about $11 per Deluxe profit (split between US & AUS Hasbro) when sold here.
If more people keep importing Lego/Hasbro/Mattel toys instead of buying from domestic retailers here, those foreign owned companies only get the smaller profit-margin of wherever you imported it from.
(and use other negligible factors as the "official" excuse for the price difference)

Hope this doesn't end up being a trend for Lego, Hasbro & Mattel, to force American online stores from exporting their cheaper products, as BBTS isn't the only site toy-collectors like to use. It was just the most convenient source, to buy a wide range of stuff to save shipping.
This will impact on importing, but wont stop it, as those shipping-forwarding companies will end up doing more business from this.

So are there any other places that sell Lego at prices like BBTS? I've ventured over to Toywiz but their prices are pretty much the same as local retail if u include postage

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SkyWarp91

So are there any other places that sell Lego at prices like BBTS? I've ventured over to Toywiz but their prices are pretty much the same as local retail if u include postage

---

Barnes & Noble do some fair prices on licensed stuff and are pretty good about shipping. However the product range can be limited and I don't know if LEGO have gotten to them like they have with Amazon and BBTS since I haven't shopped there in about a year.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by SkyWarp91

So are there any other places that sell Lego at prices like BBTS? I've ventured over to Toywiz but their prices are pretty much the same as local retail if u include postage

---

Sorry, can't help you on that one, I restrict my collecting to transformers otherwise I'd need medical help...:o

makes me wonder how long until hasbro does the same "No importing TFs for Australia!"