Amazon Australia
You can buy groceries from across the ditch – but should you? (Image: Archi Banal)

BusinessApril 13, 2022

The pros and cons of getting your groceries delivered from Australia

Guest writer
Amazon Australia
You can buy groceries from across the ditch – but should you? (Image: Archi Banal)

The deals sound hard to resist, but are they too good to be true? Chris Schulz investigates.

It seemed incredible. It seemed appalling. With grocery prices across Aotearoa skyrocketing and the Commerce Commission investigating the country’s supermarket duopoly, it also seemed entirely plausible. Could you really order your groceries from Australia and get them shipped here for cheaper than it would be to buy them at your local supermarket down the road?

When a Twitter user from Otago posted a thread detailing how she’d saved 35% on her grocery bill by shopping with Amazon Australia, she sparked a flurry of horrified reactions. Some were incredulous. Others were infuriated. Her kids were impressed: “My sons, who are gamers and think I’m really uncool, tell me I was the talk of their gamer friends for a while,” she said.

Her ruse was simple. She opened up Amazon Australia and ordered pantry staples and everyday household items, including rolled oats, toothpaste, pasta, face wash and dried fruit. A few days later, she purchased the same or equivalent items from her local supermarket in Otago. With Amazon offering free shipping, she made a 35% saving by buying from Amazon over her local supermarket.

Amazon Australia
Groceries procured from Jeffrey Bezos’s Amazon (Image: Twitter)

Was it true? I had to find out. I spent a recent Monday creating accounts for New World, Countdown and Pak’nSave, then logged into my old Amazon account which I last used to buy South Park DVDs. Then I furiously loaded up my carts, trying to buy exactly the same grocery items across all four online stores. It was more difficult, time-consuming and brain-numbing than it sounds.

What did I find? Plenty of problems. You can’t buy dairy products that need to be chilled, like cheese and yoghurt, from Amazon. You can’t buy fresh fruit and vegetables, like carrots or onions, either. You also can’t buy bottles of wine or beersies. In other words, Amazon is not exactly a one-stop shop for your weekly groceries. 

What the online shopping giant does let you do is stock up on pantry staples and other items in bulk, for cheap. Almost every item I examined, from pasta to tomato sauce to dental floss, was cheaper via Amazon. Some of the price differences were staggering: in New Zealand, you can’t get almond milk cheaper than $4 a litre. Via Amazon, it is $1.70. Milo, Coco Pops and Moccona instant coffee are all cheaper overseas too.

If you’re someone who regularly gets your groceries delivered, it’s an even better deal: Amazon offers free shipping on many products, while all local supermarkets charge up to $15. (A caveat: not all Amazon products qualify for free shipping, and some have minimum order restrictions. If I wanted floss at that price, I had to buy three.)

Just like supermarkets, prices online also fluctuate depending on specials. Last week, Amazon offered $6 off a 200g jar of Moccona. This week, it’s full price – which is still cheaper than here. The good news? That Twitter user was more or less correct. If you’re prepared to put the work in comparing prices, while sourcing the rest of your weekly grocery shopping closer to home, Amazon can be a bargain-hunter’s paradise.

Image: Archi Banal/The Spinoff

Asked how we got here, Gemma Rasmussen says she isn’t surprised. Consumer NZ’s head of communications and campaigns says it’s simply a lack of competition, meaning supermarkets can set whatever prices they like. “New Zealanders face a distinct lack of competition in the grocery sector with just two main players,” she says. “As a result, we pay a lot more for groceries than we should.”

She’s talking about Woolworths NZ, which runs Countdown, and Foodstuffs, which operates New World and Pak’nSave – the duopoly recently investigated by the Commerce Commission, whose final report stopped short of recommending it be split up. Instead, it suggested a mandatory code of conduct, along with guidelines for suppliers, promotional pricing and loyalty schemes.

That continuing duopoly is blamed for skyrocketing food prices. Rasmussen points to a recent local poll that shows 98% of respondents are worried about the rising price of groceries. It’s no wonder, then, that customers are exploring alternative options, including shipping staples across the ditch from a company owned by a man who rode a penis rocket into space.

So why are Australia’s prices cheaper? That’s due to increased competition between a wider range of supermarket options, including a healthy number of smaller, independent outlets. “Simply put, Australians have more choice about where to shop and they enjoy lower prices than we do,” Rasmussen says. Even with the arrival of American giant Costco, and the recent addition of online retailer Supie, that’s unlikely to change soon. “We doubt New Zealanders will be seeing more affordable prices at the checkout soon.”

Despite the savings, Rasmussen isn’t convinced shopping with Amazon is the answer. She has some other suggestions. “If consumers aren’t happy with the prices that they’re paying, we’d recommend they explore alternative options where possible such as growing your own [food], vege markets, Supie, or retailers like The Warehouse who stock some food items,” she says.

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    There’s another factor to consider: the impact importing your own groceries could have on climate change. “We do recognise that for most people, it is really hard to avoid the major supermarkets, and this speaks to the dominance they have in the market,” she says. “While shopping across the Tasman to score better deals is appealing, it could leave shoppers vulnerable to delays, and there are environment impacts to flying all of your food in.”

    The woman who sent that tweet and sparked a furore, who asked to stay anonymous, says she’s not surprised by the fuss her tweet caused. She used to write a weekly budget advice column for her local paper, and now provides the same service for friends and family on Facebook. Despite her savings, she’s not a dedicated Amazon shopper, and isn’t sure if she’ll return. 

    She’s still working her way through the supplies from her last shop, the one that caused all the fuss. But she’s still snooping around, comparing savings, hoping to bank the difference. Recently, she found another Australian grocer that ships to New Zealand. She plans to compare it to Bezos’s behemoth. “Then I’ll make a decision on whether to go with Amazon again.”

    Keep going!
    Ex-Shortland Street actor turned property mogul Paul Reid, in his TV days, and Whammy Bar (Photos: Supplied; additional design by Archi Banal)
    Ex-Shortland Street actor turned property mogul Paul Reid, in his TV days, and Whammy Bar (Photos: Supplied; additional design by Archi Banal)

    BusinessApril 12, 2022

    Ex-Shortland Street star landlord gives tenant bad review over vaccine passes

    Contributing writer
    Ex-Shortland Street actor turned property mogul Paul Reid, in his TV days, and Whammy Bar (Photos: Supplied; additional design by Archi Banal)
    Ex-Shortland Street actor turned property mogul Paul Reid, in his TV days, and Whammy Bar (Photos: Supplied; additional design by Archi Banal)

    When Auckland music venue Whammy Bar decided to continue checking vaccine passes, they were flooded with negative reviews online – including one from their own landlord, ex-Shortland Street star turned property mogul Paul Reid.

    Well-loved music venue Whammy Bar is nestled in St Kevins Arcade on Auckland’s Karangahape Road. As the number of music venues across the city have dwindled over the years, Whammy has cemented its place in Tāmaki Makaurau’s alternative music scene as a rare gem for live performance. 

    Since announcing last week that it would be keeping its vaccine pass system in place, despite the government removing the mandate for hospitality businesses, Whammy has received a spate of one-star reviews and negative comments online – as have other bars that have decided to keep using vaccine passes, such as Dunedin’s Woof!

    On Monday evening, things took a turn for the bizarre for the owners of the bar. “I was quite surprised to see my landlord was one of these people leaving reviews,” says Tom Anderson, who co-owns Whammy. 

    Reid’s Facebook review of Whammy was met with a mostly angry response

    The review came from their ex-Shortland Street actor and Rubicon frontman landlord Paul Reid, who has owned St Kevins Arcade since 2015 under his property management company The Icon Group. The review read: “This used to be a cool punk rock dive bar..you know punk anti establishment cool kinda vibe.. now there’s nothing more punk rock than ‘can I scan your vaccine pass please’ lol”.

    Responses to Reid’s post were overwhelmingly negative, with commenters describing his move as “simply disgusting and unacceptable” and “a chicken shit way to shaft” his tenants. Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick also criticised Reid’s review on Twitter.

    Anderson says Reid hadn’t expressed any concerns to him ahead of posting the review, and added, “he has my number so it was an interesting way to get his point across”.

    Reid was quoted earlier today in a Stuff article saying that he thought it was ironic that Whammy, a venue that he believes has made a name for itself as being “anti-establishment and anti-government”, was “clinging so religiously to an outdated government mode of social exclusion”.

    “I also thought it a poor business decision to exclude a certain percentage of the population who may be unvaccinated for a host of ethical, religious or moral reasons,” he said in the same Stuff piece.

    Paul Reid as Marshall on Shortland Street, and today in his property mogul guise

    On his landlord’s commentary about what is considered punk or anti-establishment, Anderson says, “I think that’s a strange take to come from somebody who’s literally a landlord.” From Whammy’s perspective, punk and anti-establishment ideology “means looking after your community and taking care of each other”.

    “The establishment has also said that [vaccine passes] are not necessary any more and we’re choosing to use them anyway to keep our communities, staff and punters safe,” he adds.

    Whammy Bar (Photo: Supplied)

    Reid played troubled teen Marshall Heywood on Shortland Street from 2001 to 2004, and enjoyed some success with pop-punk band Rubicon around the same time. Alongside his property business, he still dabbles in music, and last July, Reid’s pop-rock band Capital Theatre received $10,000 in NZ On Air funding to make a music video.

    His transformation from Shortland Street star to property mogul has been a colourful one.

    In 2019 a Herald investigation found he was the country’s most prolific house flipper during the six years to 2018 – closing at least 130 trades and 70 homes in short-term sales in a single year. 

    The Spinoff reported in September 2020 that struggling businesses in Elliot Stables, another central Auckland property owned by Reid, had been threatened with eviction after two lockdowns. Five eateries and one backpackers were served Property Law Act notices from their landlord, demanding that they pay the shortfall in their rent to avoid further legal action. 

    Elliot Stables (Photo: Michael Andrew)

    In 2016, Metro reported that on the night Reid secured the ownership of the St Kevins Arcade building from previous owner Murray Rose, he declared he was buying the building and would “get rid of you left-wing creeps” after being asked to leave The Wine Cellar, the bar that neighbours Whammy in St Kevins Arcade.

    Rohan Evans, who owns The Wine Cellar, and established Whammy Bar over a decade ago before selling to the current owners, has also decided to maintain the vaccine pass system. Evans was with Anderson when the Facebook review “popped up” and says, “the more you think about it, the more outrageous it is”.

    Considering how difficult the last year has been for venues because of the Covid-19 outbreak, “that’s throwing a bunch of your tenants under the bus for no particular reason”, Evans says.

    Similarly to Whammy’s reasoning, the decision to keep the vaccine pass system operating at The Wine Cellar was made “largely on making staff and musicians that we are in day-to-day contact with feel comfortable”, says Evans, so “it seems quite outrageous to be attacked by a landlord who is also a musician”.

    Despite being “mostly overwhelmed by support” they’ve had plenty of anonymous negative reviews due to keeping passes, says Evans – though none so far from Reid. 

    Will this criticism influence Whammy’s continuation of the vaccine passes? While case numbers remain high, it certainly won’t, Anderson says. “We’ll continue to do what we were doing for however long we’re going to do it for. This is never a permanent solution to anything – it’s just another layer of safety.”

    According to one scientific model of New Zealand’s omicron outbreak, when compared with boosted people, unvaccinated people are 3.1 times more likely to infect others and 2.4 times more likely to be infected.

    “We’ll continue to keep vax passports and masks for people moving around the bar,” Anderson adds. “We’re still currently in the middle of a pandemic and if any of our staff go down, we can’t open, so that’s bad for business.”

    And if Auckland bar-goers are as supportive as Dunedin’s, the negative reviews may backfire – in the wake of the backlash to its decision to keep vaccine passes, Woof! celebrated its biggest week of the year.

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