During my time in South Africa I wanted to test out how easy it would be to buy something online and have it shipped to me here. It didn’t take too long to come up with the item I wanted to purchase. Right before I left the states I remember watching Jamie Foxx win an Oscar for his performance in the movie Ray. I enjoyied the movie in the theater and since most of the people at Thrive haven’t see it, I found my test product. I chose Amazon.com as my retailer since I figured they would be the most reliable for shipping overseas. The price of the DVD “Ray” from Amazon was $22. Next, the unknown… shipping. I had three different prices to choose from: the first was for 20-30 day shipping at $8, the next was 10-20 days at $12 and finally “express” 3-10 days at $28. I decided to go with 10-20 days because I wanted it to get here before I left. So I placed my order and then simply had to wait… and wait… and wait for my DVD to arrive.

We now fast forward 16 days and my DVD arrived at the local post office. Yea, $34 isn’t the cheapest, but it is actually cheaper then buying it from a local store, not that there is even a store within 2 hours that sells DVD’s. You might be wondering why the title says $40, where is the other $6? The answer is called “Import Duty”. That’s right, it cost an additional $6 just to bring it into the country. Thanks, South Africa.

Even though I paid $40 for a $22 DVD I would still call the test a success only because it worked. Unfortunatly, for me the internet over here is not really a place where you could buy cheap movies online.

1. Jonathan said...

    

   Very nice - the global economy is alive and well.