@micknnicki,
It's not an issue of a cutoff at our borders in terms of good customer service. There is, however, a cutoff at our borders in terms of Australian law and enforceability of consumer legislation. Quoting: "If the seller is based overseas, there may be practical and legal difficulties in enforcing your consumer guarantee rights against an overseas business."
Major brands such as Swiss Diamond, Emile Henry, Maxwell Scott, etc., will of course stand by their products and will accept returned items that haven't lasted, replacing those items. There may be relevant issues in terms of country in which the items were purchased; for instance, I buy Emile Henry from either the European or US range because the colours and range differ from the (much more limited) Australian range, so if I ever had a problem with one of their items, I'd have to post it back internationally and have the replacement sent to one of my forwarding addresses... but I've never had any problem with Emile Henry products and don't anticipate having any in the future. (Au contraire - I'm adding more (in burgundy / grand cru) all the time.)
Manufacturers of big brands (particularly electronics) that are purchased from overseas and then go kaplunk or pffffft are a diffierent issue again. Many of them explicitly make clear that warranty doesn't apply if the item is a grey import/parallel import. People who buy, for example, a sound system from an overseas seller, when the sound system could be purchased from an Australian seller (authorised seller who obtains the sound systems from the local distributor), are risking NO WARRANTY on the item. Of course the reason for making that grey import purchase is that the item is going to be cheaper than buying it locally. That's one of the trade-off issues. (For that matter, consider electrical safety standards!)
