Amazon Australia Experience 2018 - Buying Manga

When Amazon launched in Australia in late 2017, it was very extremely disappointing. However, as of recently, the marketplace has become bigger and there are much more choices than before. There was even a $20 voucher given if you purchased before July 2018, but unfortunately I missed out on that because I was being a bonobo when it came to staking out the cheapest prices. I bought three manga from Amazon AU, all of which were from Amazon US. Pretty stupid right? I chose to buy it from there because they had extremely cheap prices for the manga during those time. I bought Uzumaki, Cells at Work V1 and Cells at Work V5. 

Price:

Ahhhh, when it comes to collecting manga, I'm sure everyone will try to save a few cents here and there. Sometimes it is really worth waiting to save that extra $1. I bought Uzumaki for $25.50 AUD (included GST), and that was $2 cheaper than the next cheapest option from BookDepository, so sometimes Amazon does offer cheaper prices. The other two were bought at about $15, and I probably could have got them a few cents cheaper, but I didn't want to pay for free delivery (since you need to buy $49 worth of items if you purchase from Amazon US vendor when you have Amazon Prime). 

Overall, Amazon AU generally doesn't have cheaper prices than BookDepository, but it's definitely cheaper than my local stores. However, there are rare occurrences that they are way cheaper than BookDepository (e.g $2 cheaper) and sometimes they can be consistently cheaper. I'm not sure how they decide what price to charge but sometimes prices can jump or drop significantly for no apparent reason.

Packaging:

The packaging from Amazon AU was superb and there was no damage to the parcel or the books itself either. The parcel box itself was extremely high quality and it's a really good box to keep the parcels in. Well done Amazon.

Speed of Delivery:

Speed is of the essence, my old friend. Since I purchased from Amazon US vendor through Amazon AU, they estimated it would take 14 working days (that's a long time). However, it came in 9 working days so it only took about 2/3 of its estimated time. Now that's amazing and I really didn't expect it to come early since it was free delivery from overseas. Another neat thing is that if you put the tracking number on the Australia Post app, you can track the package in good detail.

Overall Verdict:

I am very happy with the service provided by Amazon AU. There was no hassle involved and delivery was earlier than estimated. Amazon AU is definitely a good addition to the Australian market and I already pre-ordered a product from them that's $6 cheaper than BookDepository. I hope Amazon AU expands their collection so I can buy from them more!