Trivago etc are ripping off australians and don't pay tax

**ol' boy** · 11-09-18, 03:28 PM

Originally Posted by gamve

Tricky Dicky has just got the shits cause he did not think of the booking scam first.......

I think you have a valid point there.
Seems to be a few of these old school businessmen jealous of these new internet success stories...
Gerry Harvey would be another

**gamve** · 14-09-18, 01:18 PM

Yep thanks to Gerry "GST tax collector" Harvey we all take it up the arse for everything we buy overseas.
This cnut will never see a dollar from me and everyone I can convince to boycott the cnut.

**enf** · 14-09-18, 02:08 PM

Like many, I go to his stores quite a lot. I see first hand what is available, then go somewhere else and buy it cheaper.

**trash** · 14-09-18, 04:55 PM

Originally Posted by hoe

So it pays to shop around. i wouldn't say any of these type of sites are ripoffs, just another option.
so they don't pay tax in au, neither do apple etc...

They're subject to the same taxation laws as ebay/ali/amazon. If the shop front is in Australia, then they can hit them up for the tax.
If the shop front isn't in Australia, then there is SFA the government can do about it.
Anybody who wants to get around the online GST rules can do it with the minimal amount of fuss.

I want to know what the banking Royal commission isn't looking into international transaction fees.

As an example. If I shop on aliexpress.com.AU .... the shop front is on Australian soil.
I pay in AUD, Australian dollars and I pay GST on the sale because it is considered to be an Australian transaction.
But the National Australia bank charges me an "international" transaction fee. That shit ain't going to fly with me. The bank is fvcking us over for about 5% per transaction, this is on top of the credit card fees we already pay.

Anyhow.... to prove my point about Dick Smith not thinking this one through, I booked my hotel directly for work this week. I stayed there last week and booked via an online booking agent.
This week I rang the hotel direct and spoke to the owner. She knows who I am because I've stayed there several times over the past couple of months.
I did not ask for any sort of discount because I wanted to see if she would drop the price automatically because she did not have to pay the 15% commission to the agent.

How much do you think I paid?
$5 more than the online price and then I was stung 1.5% credit card fee on top of that. Booking online, that is in the price.

That's another thing for the banking royal commission. When the government introduced the GST they knew retailers would try and gouge an extra 10% even if they had already taken the GST into account on their pricing.
So they made it clear that all pricing must be inclusive of GST. And there was a similar law to stop this happenign with eftpos and credit card fees. It's gouging.
The airlines were also given a kick in the nuts for advertising airfares "$99 to London" (+$1800 airport and duties).

Forcing retailers to absorb the price will for them to factor it into their pricing as they should, and stop them just passing the buck to retailers who have no recourse to bitch about it to the banks.

Dick Smith cannot see who the victims are here. He thinks it is the hotels who are complicent in the problem and facilitating it. It is us, the hotel's customers who are getting arse raped for 15%.
And lets not be under any delusion here. I like the online web agents because they allow me to compare a large range and see options I would not otherwise have found.
It costs money to run those services, so I expect them to take a commission for doing their job. The 15% is their money that they earned. Now I might think that 15% is a bit high.

If I was a hotel owner, my hotel rate is $100. It's my bottom line. I list for $115 to account for the commission so I do not run at a loss.
As a good businessman, I'm going to be looking for ways to make more money and removing a middle man is one of those ways.
I can just charge my customers $15 extra for being too smart, effectively just stealing their saving from both them and the agent.
As a customer, you guessed it, that was money that I worked to save and the hotelier just pocketed it. FVCK HIM! I will use the website and pay the piper.

This is simple game theory. And it falls under similar rules to the "Prisioners' Dilemma".

We can look at all the variables in this problem.
The customer can pay $100 for the room or $115 with the commission.
The room rate is $100, so the hotelier cannot sell for less than $100.
The web agent clearly brings more customers through the door, and makes finding a room and comparing rates easier.

Removing the middle middle man, the agent will save $15. So the real question is, if the transaction is performed between just the hotelier and the customer, what should the rate be?
$100? There is no benefit to the hotelier in doing this. The benefit is completely to the customer that there is no middle man.

It is the customer who initiates the transaction and does the work, so if they split the $15 saving, the hotelier gets $7.50 more for not using the agent, but the customer is still paying $7.50 to the hotelier than he otherwise would, but at the same time not paying $7.50 more in commission.

The moral question in this transaction is, if you remove the middle man, where does his $15 commission go?