Price Dispersion

This is purely anecdotal, but it seems to me that there is more "price dispersion" in Australia than in the US. Price dispersion is the variation in prices charged by different sellers for the same item. It's closely related to price discrimination but the latter is intentional charging of different prices by the same firm while price dispersion is charging of different prices by different firms, though it would also include charging of different prices in different outlets by the same firm which is possibly price discrimination (it's not price discrimination to the extent that costs differ across locations).

Prices certainly do vary in the US from luxury outlets to discount stores and from poor to rich neighborhoods but I don't remember seeing as big a variation between stores that are more or less side by side. For example, you can buy an Oral-B or Colgate toothbrush for anywhere from $1 to $7 within a few store fronts in the Canberra Centre (the big mall in Canberra City). The $1 toothbrushes were apparently intended for the Vietnam or Thai market but are being sold in Australia. Large ranges also exist for food items (particulary fruit and vegetables) at side by side stores. Also for items like bed sheets the range can be very wide for a given quality level. Are Australians less willing to shop around the stores to find bargains than Americans? ("Shopping around" would result in competition and convergence to the same price), or do I have the wrong impression of the US? Or is this just a Canberra (the wealthiest metropolitan area in Australia) phenomenon?

P.S. Just one price I noticed today - haircut at a franchised chain - $A22, U.S. price $US14. Another example of where the exchange rate ought to be - though 63 U.S. Cents is a bit at the low end (it's currently at 92 U.S. Cents).

How Much Does it Cost to Replace a Car Window?

This isn't our car, just the closest picture I could find on the web

Some time between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning someone smashed the front passenger window on our car, which was in a supposedly secure underground car park underneath our apartment building (at least in Canberra, car parks under the building are the norm at apartment complexes (why not complices?)). That's all that happened. Either they were looking for the garage opening device that all of us have been warned not to leave in our cars or thought that an empty bag lying on the back floor might have had a laptop in it. We won't leave a bag in the car again.

The police said that the body corporate should install security cameras. The body corporate person told me that cameras are useless...

Anyway, so we needed to get quotes. These guys who advertise on TV wanted $A450 whether we went to them or they came to us to replace the glass. NRMA quoted $A350. Another guy wanted $A300. In the end we went with a semi-DIY approach. This morning we went to Queanbeyan, NSW about 10 miles away and bought a second hand window for $A75. Then Snork Maiden took it to another place in Canberra that cleaned and fitted it for $A88. You need to add some time and fuel costs into our real price but still it looks like there is a lot of price dispersion there.