As I was looking up the Bowker website for when I go to buy ISBNs I found it has separate URLs for The US and for Australia (which is good because I'm Australian). but the prices seem....strange
No. of ISBNs | US Cost | USD -> AUSD | Aus Cost
-------------------------------------------------
1 | $125 | $165.45 | $44
10 | $290 | $383.85 | $88
100 | $575 | $761.09 | $480
1000 | $1500 | $1985.44 | $3000
USD -> AUD calculated using xe.com 24/04/2017
Up to 100 ISBNs it's cheaper for an Australian to buy from the.au site but when it's 1,000 it's actually more expensive to buy from the.au site than it is to buy from the US Site after currency conversion (this assumes the prices on the.au site are in AUD but if they aren't and are actually in USD then it's even more expensive).
But why is this? If it was in some odd way more expensive to deal with ISBNs brought by Australians then why aren't they more expensive across the broad? What stops an Australian buying 1000 ISBNs from the US Site and saving almost $1,000?
Also is the explanation for the price discrepancy between US and Aus prices for 1000 ISBNs the same for why in the US 10 -> 100 is less than 2x (~1.9827586206896551724137931034483) the price while in Australia it's almost 5.5x (~5.4545454545454545454545454545455) more?