American shopping...or how much we pay...

I'm just back from a holiday in Hawaii...
Will blog more about it another time but was out at Chadstone the other day and stopped into Mecca Cosmetica. Love that shop- if I could afford to I would buy everything. It's all so pretty and smells so lovely - a little piece of retail heaven!
What I don't like is the price. Mainly because I've been to the USA before and with online shopping nowadays everyone can see how much other countries are paying.

Here are two examples of my purchases and how much it would costs here in Oz:

Nars Velvet Matte lip pencil- I already had this in Sex Machine- a pretty soft pink from my last USA holiday. This time round I bought it in  Frivolous- which has a slight glitter in a more beige pink. At Mecca it costs AUD $50. At Sephora it as USD $24 plus 4.2% tax..with the Aussie dollar so strong this came to about AUD $25....half price.

Perricone MD Cold Plasma- a new face cream for me. The smell is au natural and rather mariney..not too pleasant but I'm getting used to it. It sinks in in a lovely way and the sales assistant at Sephora raved about it. At Mecca Cosmetica it costs AUD $225 for 30 ml, compared to USD $150 plus tax at Sephora.

I understand there are shipping costs, and customs and other costs. But with the Aussie dollar being so strong, we don't seem to be having any savings past onto us. Unfortunately Sephora doesn't accept orders from Australia :( A sad first world problem.