Exactly, Ernest.
Unfortunately, the whole "get it cheaper online" idea has bred a new perception in the online buying generation.
At first, a lot of people were hesitant to buy online for a number of reasons:
no warranty;
no technical support;
no try-it-on-before-you-buy (with clothes, jewellery, perfume, etc.);
concerns about fraudulent items;
as-is being explicitly understood to be a condition of auction purchases;
waiting instead of receiving item instantly.
Some - primarily those who were already the buy-it-through-the-Trading-Post-or-local-paper sort - embraced online purchasing for second-hand, rare, collectible items, or for items not available locally. Gradually some sellers saw that it could take off as a way of selling without the overheads of a real shop, and the consequently lower prices attracted some purchasers.
Gradually more and more people bought online, seeing the lower prices as making it worth the risk. This was especially the case as eBay and PayPal moved to offer buyers "protection" if the item was not as described or didn't arrive.
(IMPORTANT NOTE: There is a problem with this: it encourages an idea that you as an online purchaser are entitled to the same protections as a shop purchase - i.e., warranty, technical support, right to report and return frauds, ignoring the "as-is" EXPLICITLY defined in Australian Consumer Protection law, and of course RECEIVING THE ITEM VIRTUALLY INSTANTLY.)
Online sellers are more and more under pressure of sending purchased items almost before the purchase is made. Granted, we all like having our orders filled asap, but unrealistic ideas about supply time are prolific in the online buying community. In my view, if you buy online, one of the drawbacks is the delay in receiving what you've purchased. That's a given. That's how it is. It might be 2 weeks, it might be 4, it might be months. None of us have any control over that transit time. I take that into account when deciding whether or not I'll buy something online.
I didn't mention one point in my "IMPORTANT NOTE" sentence: try-it-on-before-you-buy. You'd have thought that people buying things online would realise that's an implicit and unavoidable drawback to buying something advertised online - you can't try on the dress; you can't spray on the perfume; you can't try the jewellery against your skin; you can't pick up the book, flip through the pages to see whether or not you like the writing style, see that it's in perfect undented condition, is the right edition, etc.; you can't see the list of performers in a DVD if the listing or item information doesn't include it. You CAN listen to a sample of a track if you're buying a music CD and IF there ARE sample tracks to listen to, but if for instance you want to listen to the bit on track 19 3 minutes in, to see whether you like the way the singer performs a particular section of a song, you can't! The sample, if there is one, is arbitrary, and it usually includes the first 30 or 60 seconds of a piece, not a section from the middle.
But... and here's the problem... one of the huge benefits of buying from a shop, staffed with well-informed people who can give expert advice and make expert and informed recommendations, which can also allow you the huge advantage of physically seeing, touching, holding, etc., the item in question, is now being assumed as a right for the online purchase.
Of course, there's a problem. If I'm buying a dress from an online seller, I can't actually try it on before I buy. But I could buy from an eBay seller (new or second-hand) and claim "significantly not as described" and threaten a negative if I can't return the dress with full postage refund both ways as well as item refund - assuming the dress just doesn't look any good on me.
By doing that, I'm claiming the advantage of a real shop, for the price of an item bought from an online seller. I'm trying to have my cake and eat it.
Ditto with buying a book. I might be in the mood for buying a few books for a holiday coming up. But being a scungy non-real-bookshop-buyer (let's assume this for a moment, even though I'm not!), I'm not going to perform the tricky task of browsing online for some books that I might like. No - I'll go and visit a real bookshop, browse through the books, pick up the books, flip through them, decide which ones attract me, take note of the book information, and go away and buy from an online bookshop so that I give myself every sort of advantage.
It sounds attractive - and buyers claim that all a shop has to do to convert their browsing into a sale is to have prices at the same level as an online bookshop. That, of course, is intrinsically not able to happen, quite irrespective of the GST hoo-ha. (Running costs of the shop, supply cost of the books from Australian distributors, etc.) The buyer knows that, so by demanding price-matching that literally cannot happen, they're creating an excuse haven for their buying practices.
In my opinion - and this might sound harsh - either I do my searching and browsing and buying ENTIRELY online (with all the risks involved, and the different methods of online browsing from the browsing in a real shop), or I buy from the shop through whose stock I'm browsing. I believe very strongly that it's disingenuous and dishonest to use a real shop as a browsing and try-on facility for an online purchase.
