Well no place is perfect. However trying to transition from an extremely large country to a small one I figured I was at an advantage since $1 USD is worth $1.28 NZD. I figured this made the country very affordable, especially since the cost of petrol/gasoline was lower here.

Then I figured if you looked at the way their taxes work it was even better because though there is 12% tax on goods, it’s actually included in all items so you do not have to add it at the sales counter.
Everything looks fairly inexpensive given these factors. However you can do all the conversion you want and you will never find anything close for prices on computer stuff. Seems that everything I already knew I would want in a computer doesn’t exist in NZ, or it’s in such small quantity that the prices are jacked up.

No problem, I am an internet guy. I have ordered shit from Japan, China, Europe before and gotten it shipped to the US for extremely reasonable rates. I will just do the same here right…

WRONG

First I went on newegg.com. I am happy to pay jacked shipping rates from newegg because they are the shit and even w/expensive shipping they would still be cheaper than NZ sellers. Well that’s out because newegg does NOT ship internationally. Fuck.

Ok, amazon is universal. I checked their site and they themselves say they ship to NZ and they have tons of other people selling on there who have their own shipping rates who will ship it if they don’t. Well I spent a couple hours adding items to a shopping cart because most sellers won’t ship Most items to NZ. Seems even though amazon says they ship to NZ if you look at the item descriptions virtually all items say “this item is only available to ship to the US”, and then if you add the item from a seller who will ship it there you will pay a TON in shipping. I added $685 worth of stuff and there was $723 in shipping charges (before I cancelled my order).

Ok, it’s gotta just be that I know American sites and not the right NZ sites right? Talking to locals and none of them know any good sites to buy from at all except trademe.co.nz. That’s their only site. It’s like ebay / craigslist (if craigslist charged to list). So I did some internet research and found somebody else bitching about newegg not shipping to New Zealand and read through the suggestions people gave on there. The only helpful one was pricespy.co.nz. Which is the same as pricewatch.com in the fact that all the best rates are listed there from all sorts of different companies.

Well all the best rates STILL SUCK. Fine, I cave I must buy at shitty prices so I will go to those sites. Hmm, seems a trick to show up as the best price on pricespy is to list your prices on your site NOT including GST. Which according to Vicki isn’t legal, but I believe it is for websites since they still calculate it at the end. Still lets total everything I want up in 1 cart. Ok I still have $2400 NZD worth of stuff I need ($1867 USD) on one site here, and that is also assuming I drive there to pick it up and not pay to have it shipped. Might as well… Small country. Ok what does the same list of shit cost on newegg you might ask…. $1194 shipped to US.

Ok, lets just take advantage of friends/family and have them reship. Well that might work for the small parts like kbd/mouse, but for the 2 monitors, full tower steel computer case, psu, etc.. It would cost family $763 to ship it to me.

That’s slightly more than it cost me to ship myself here!!!

I have already purchased a processor and motherboard from my friend who works for Intel who has shipped it to me which kicks ass… Also I still have 6TB worth of hard drives that I took with me. What I didn’t know is the processor and video card I want require me to get a 750watt or greater PSU, that combined with a case and a water cooling system which seems needed for the quad core speed I am getting, makes the things that didn’t used to cost shit cost a ton. I used to buy $40 case that came with PSU.

Ok, I have started spouting too much computer jargon, which means I probably need to stop talking.