From the point of view of a small medium enterprise like Carlton Audio Visual, the sovereign entities of Google and Facebook have evolved by placing themselves in the way of every consumer and every purveyor in every transaction. The question is ... have they added or subtracted value to consumers and purveyors?

On a busy Saturday afternoon I took a phone call from a gentleman asking if we sold Sennheiser TV headphones … I said not and suggested he contact JB Hi Fi who I knew carried that range … only he told me he had already tried ring JB in Doncaster but hadn’t been able to get through and asked me if I could recommend a store. So I suggested he contact the Bourke st branch where I have found the staff helpful and engaging. 

However he then went on to tell me that he had actually purchased the headphones from Amazon for  $100 less than the normal go price and actually was simply looking for help on how to set them up as he was having issues ….

So here is the thing … this perfectly decent consumer was happy to buy the product from a ruthless global entity that launches pointless phallic rockets into the upper atmosphere … and then ring to get setup advice and consultation from bricks and mortar retailers at their peak time and labour cost basis.

This is very interesting as a new format for musical replay ... so rather than store your collection in a potentially vulnerable physical player or hard drive you store it on an Amazon provided online database ...