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I have a different point of view. During the last 6 months I have had two Internet purchases, one related to Head-Fi, which total over $1000 and it's looking like I may not see either purchase. It's much easier to interact with a company locally. Also you haven't factored in delivery charges. As an experiment I went to the Schiit Audio website and added a Lyr amp to the shopping cart and the delivery charges to Australia were between $64 & $218. The Australian site you are referring to has free express delivery on all orders.
I'm not in Melbourne and have no plans to go there, so for all intents and purposes I might as well be in a different country. And what about the NZ customers?
Really, what is the benefit here, except for the ability to audition for Melbourne based folk and those willing to fork out to travel to Melbourne?
If I'm in Perth or Auckland and purchasing over the internet the "purchasing experience" is for all intents and purposes the same, except now I have to pay $150 more for the product gets shipped to him first, then shipped to me - which makes me wonder, why the need for the middleman?
RMAs are no faster as he apparently only gets stock from Schiit once you place an order, so it's not as if he has a swag of amps/DACs out in a storeroom to do a swap.
Not sure what level of math you did but $150 is (a lot) more than $64 shipping. I am sorry for your bad purchasing experiences but this is purchasing from Schiit, not an unknown quantity.
So like I said, an unnecessary middleman who has only added on to the equation the additional intra-Australia shipping, 10% GST, his operating costs, and whatever "currency fluctuations" we might experience.