Quote Originally Posted by griffin View Post
Using the official exchange rate is not the real rate. That's the mid-point between the two exchange rates (AU to Yen and Yen to AU). A bank, credit card or paypal will have a rate that is about 5% off, or for the yen it is about 5 off (64yen instead of the current official rate of 69yen), which gives us about AU$250 (what it would actually cost you if you cart and pay for it at 16,000yen).
And since some online stores offer pre-order discounts, I always refer to the official "retail" price if there is one, otherwise it gets confusing (and takes time) to list a range of online prices.



The GST is one thing I keep forgetting to note, as it would make this toy about AU$270 when comparing to the (non-GST) listed price on foreign sites. It actually makes the EB Games price even better, as the $30 difference to the Japanese retail price (or 10%) is a lot better than the 40-60% difference we have on our regular retail Hasbro Transformers toys (Generations, Studio Series, Cyberverse, etc).
Fortunately, people on here and on our facebook page are being mature and intelligent enough to not criticise EB Games for a price that is not their fault... it's TakaraTomy's fault.
There are ways of getting very close to the mid rate that are not all that difficult and worthwhile for those importing regularly. I have a separate debit card account with Citibank that has zero fx fees, the exchange rate uses the official Mastercard rates (pretty close to the rates you see on Google). Case in point, I made an order with atmos in Yen on 29 March. Citi converted it at 66.15 vs 66.33 on Google for the same day.

I haven't been happy with Citi on my recent chargeback debacle so I'm switching to the same type of account with UBank (part of NAB). ING Direct and Macquarie offer similar debit accounts and there is also a new CBA credit card with zero FX fees for example.

Even if you had to pay the standard 3% fx fee on a credit card I struggle to see how you wouldn't do substantially better than the ~7% implied fee you are suggesting for Yen. What you definitely want to avoid is Paypal converting the currency, you WILL get screwed royally. There is an option in the settings to have your card provider do the conversion - this should always be ticked.

Fair call on wanting to use the RRP for comparison. However, to me apples to apples would be comparing the pre-order discounted prices with EB since they are both pre-orders. The discounts are given as incentive to lock-in orders well in advance of the release. I think importing from discounted sources should save a fair bit of money off the EB price even ignoring the benefits of avoiding GST with certain online sites. Regardless, if people want to buy local to have peace of mind on returns then that's their choice.