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What about buying from the online Apple Store (http://store.apple.com/nz)? How do the prices compare then?

Those prices are the same as retail.

To give you an idea of the markup, a 15" MacBook Pro 2.66Ghz costs US$2199 on the American Apple site. If it were sold for the same price in New Zealand it would cost NZ$2870. It actually retails for NZ$3799 (nearly NZ$1000 more).

One reason: the US prices don't include any sales tax, while the NZ prices do.

This. Exactly this. I once looked into getting a friend to get a Macbook from the US for me; by the time taxes were taken into account it was going to be no cheaper at all – and if I took my GST write-off into account, the US import would have been more expensive.

Almost this.

$2870.00 * 1.15 = $3300.50 $3300.50 < $3799

(We have a 15% sales tax that also applies to items ordered from overseas over a certain threshold)

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