Ordering in

We're 27 km from the nearest pizza bar and I don't think that they deliver.


I'm writing this, back after Bathurst Markets/Spotlight for Xmasalia (there's even enough to satisfy me)/Legall Patisserie (there is life down there, after all, but no website) on a warmly humid with t-storms threatening afternoon (now cool and t-storms gone off towards Sydney).

The jungle lawn is in limbo as I am trying to avoid the cold which appeared yesterday and can't face wrestling with two stroke and mulched grass. Will water and wrap tinsel around gate posts in the cool of evening if it doesn't rain (did after bedtime last night but potted garden now looks wilty).

Am in the very slow process of ordering clothes in outrageously large sizes from Ralph Lauren in the USA through a company based in Bendigo, VIC called Price USA.

Slowness seems to be from Ralph's Flash rich site although my constant friend telstra seems involved at times.

I was told about this company by a very helpful sales assistant in Sydney on Monday when I said that I wished that the larger sized Ralph that I have bought in NYC and London (at Rochester) was available here. He said that if I used Price USA I could order from Ralph Lauren.com in the US.

There has been a lot of comment in Australia recently about taxing/gsting purchases from overseas because they have been increasing with the rise in the Australian dollar and local retailers think they are missing out on something (money).

This has come at a time when I seem to have made a few orders of watercolour paper/books from Amazon/a book from Amazon UK as a Xmas present for my mother/clothes from LL Bean/diaries from Smythson's/a New Yorker(although one buys from here) 2011 Diary (I wonder who that's for?. Not me.)

Some of the comments are silly; I have been ordering online for years mainly from Lands End/Eddie Bauer/LL Bean and Smythson's in London; I usually order items I can't get in Australia. In some categories our choices are very limited. When I'm in a big phase, like now, clothes are limited to stuff from High & Mighty in Sydney and Melbourne (no website) or Target Big & Tall (RM Williams also has a big boys section which is sold in their stores and in their many stockists [each country town seems to have one]). Much of what is available is not to my taste (which is for Ralph); Monday produced some good shirts and shorts from High & Mighty several of which they kindly ended up posting to me arriving, on Friday morning as I couldn't get back to the city on Tuesday.

ATO for the last few years has sensibly set an $AUD1,000 limit on value of items before they collect GST. In years gone by it was always hit or miss whether tax would have to be paid; I didn't usually but did on occasions.

Actually one problem with slowness and irritating behaviour at chez Ralph (I don't want 2 Pima cotton jade heather sweaters, just one, but it keeps defaulting to, and charging me for, 2) is that they're having a special promotion weekend as a carry over from the Black Friday sales day, so site is probably crowded. A couple of items that I'm looking at have been reduced. (Clueless in Hampton has just remembered the international dateline:: it's still Black Friday in the US. Doh.)

Now everything is having trouble reloading. Telstra to blame.

Order finally done. System is provide information/ Price USA then checks and confirms charges / pay Price USA by PayPal, credit card or "wire" whatever that is / goods are ordered. Isn't as fast as a direct order. Ralphlauren.com accepts international credit cards so they know that people from outside US are ordering. Reason for not selling directly into Australia is apparently local
franchise agreement. But local franchise won't import big sizes.

Big mouthed Gerry Norman* should realise that this is why people like me will order from overseas and will become very snarky if thwarted, and may vote with our feet and buy less from his stores in retaliation (although I bought a colour laser printer from Harvey Norman Lithgow on Thursday)::and returned a Hewlett Packard that was non Mac compliable on Friday to Officeworks in Orange.

There was true snarkiness in Byng Street in the afternoon over that ( in a further blog post).

* The story/ies have vanished from www.smh.com.au; now it's about people who buy the house next door and demolish it and turn it into a garden (the height of indulgence in land poor real estate expensive Sydney).

Image of Classic-Fit Oxford in New Rose, in better condition, copyright Ralph Lauren USA. Used with love.

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