I have been noticing a very disturbing trend lately that I need to speak out on. Please note I am referring to stock that requires or has an electrical input, and not products that run solely on battery.
There are some vendors who have been importing branded products and keeping it locally, and when they list these products, they call it local stock. In the past, and even to this day, people in the industry will still refer to these stock as grey imports - simply, if the product has not been originally shipped by the official Australian manufacturer, then its a grey import. Just because you have shipped a container of these units yourself, it is still not considered local stock.
What difference does it make? A very very huge one. Before I delve into the issues I find with this, I need to make one significant distinction - if you are importing for your own personal use, there are no legal requirements for you to comply with, however, if you are importing to re-sell, you have to meet all the regulatory requirements of an imported product.
If you are the importer of the product, you must ensure that product meets all regulatory approvals for Australia. This includes electrical safety, electromagnetic emissions etc. If the product has undergone testing for an equivalent international standards, then you are required to keep a copy of the each testing reports, and if there are any variations to the components list, you are required to also keep a copy of any amendments of components.
And here is the thing - some of those reports require a critical components list - parts of which are quite closely guarded secrets. I am fairly certain that a local grey importer of something like a Sony mobile phone will not have access to these reports from Sony, and I am almost 100% certain that Sony Australia would not provide these reports to them so that these grey importers can undermine the Australian market.
I have noticed in a few posts some of you ozbargainers question whether these products are grey imports, and some of the responses from the vendors are - "it is in our Queensland office, so it's local stock and it comes with our warranty". Whilst this is true, as they have not complied with import regulations, these products are therefore illegal to sell in Australia. I am fairly certain that if the Department of Fair Trading did an audit of these claims, these grey importers will face massive fines for not complying to import regulations.
So how does this affect you on a personal level? If for some unfortunate reason, your product causes fire damage (note the infamous Note 7 cases), your insurance claim may be invalidated if it is found that the cause of the damage has not passed Australian regulatory standards. If, on the slim chance these companies take out product liability, those insurance policies will be worthless because again, these products are illegal and so suing these companies will not get you anywhere either.
Where do we go from here? On a personal level, I feel compelled to report any vendors that claim they have local "grey stock". Of course companies based overseas are not included in this discussion, as you, the ozbargainer, are purchasing for your own personal use. If you notice when you purchase grey stock from Kogan, that you are not purchasing from Kogan Australia. It is also a "grey area" for Aussie companies acting as agents for overseas stock, so I am excluding those cases from this discussion as well.
This discussion is specifically about companies importing stock to keep in Australia, and then posting deals to Australian consumers. I believe this is illegal and should be discouraged from claiming it is local stock.
But… it's usually the "Grey Stock" sellers on eBay that give the best bargains ^_^