A short podcast episode (host: John Jonas) about buying equipment for Online Filipino Specialists (OFS). Jonas contrasts the ease and low marginal cost of buying electronics in the US with higher prices and shipping difficulties in the Philippines (import taxes, expensive courier fees) and recommends letting OFS buy locally using installment/payment options (Lazada, Shopee) and reimbursing them with receipts.
Chapters
Hello and welcome to the Secret Sauce of Outsourcing podcast. The podcast that's dedicated to making you better at outsourcing your work. My name is John Jonas and this is episode 16 buying equipment for your OFS. So this morning before school, Brig, my 8 year old comes to my wife with her phone in his hand, which I don't know how he got it, but he says to her, you need to buy me this. I was like, I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. But in the end he's on Amazon and wanted us to buy him a who would win T. Rex or a Stegosaurus dinosaur Ultimate Animal Rumble book, which he loves. He has a couple of them these who would win a polar bear or a black bear, and he reads them like crazy. So like, okay, yes, I will buy it. I always buy books for my kids. So I'm not sure how it is in the UK or Canada or Australia, but in the US if I want to buy something, it's almost never a question of whether or not I can get get it or if it's cheaper somewhere else. Like I want a new iPhone, I just buy a new iPhone and I'm pretty dang confident I'm not gonna find it cheaper somewhere else. It's super easy for us, but in the Philippines this is not the case. So people often wanna know, how do you buy your Filipino specialist a laptop? Or how do you buy them some other equipment maybe? People often wanna know a generator and an air conditioner or headphones. And this hasn't been very easy. So in the past I bought things in the US and shipped them, which is super sketchy, so you can't send it postal, which is by far the cheapest. And your people in the Philippines will tell you, no, no, no, don't send it by the post office, it'll get stolen. You have to ship it. DHL and shipping a laptop was like $250. Well, 10 years ago when I could buy a laptop for $400, and in the Philippines, that same laptop was like $900. Well, it made sense. Then another time I bought a laptop in the US and sent it home with a relative of that person who was in the US and who was going back soon. That was super simple. I bought it, shipped it to them and with it and gave it to my person in the Philippines. It worked out great. But today. So one of the reasons I did these things was because in the past it just wasn't easy for someone to buy a laptop or a MacBook Air in the Philippines. And it's still. Today, it's more expensive in the Philippines than in the US And a lot of consumer electronics are more expensive in the Philippines, even though the wages are lower. This is due to import taxes. So, for example, a MacBook Air in the US costs $999 in the Philippines. Importance, it's like 55,000 Filipino pesos, which is about $1,082. So it's like $100 more expensive just because you're in the Philippines, even though salaries are so much less. So how do you send stuff to your people in the Philippines? Well, today, it turns out with shipping and how difficult it is, it's still just easier and cheaper to have them buy it on their own. So most places where they can buy electronics now are offering installment plans. They offer easy ways to pay. It used to be really difficult. If you didn't have cash to go into the store, you had to have a credit card. And most people don't have credit cards in the Philippines. And without a credit card, you couldn't buy stuff online. So they were forced to just go into a store and deal with whatever inventory there was. This is changing. Most people can buy things online with stores in the Philippines like Lazada and Shopee. They have options. They have installment plans. They have ways to make payments. So your online Filipino specialist can go buy things on their own. And if you want to pay for it, that's great. Have them show you the receipts and then send them the money as a reimbursement. At least that's what we do. And we do pay for things quite a bit. We pay for laptops. We pay for lighting. We've paid for, like, headsets or microphones. We've paid for external hard drives. Laptops is the most common thing that we've paid for for people. Obviously, that's a critical part of their of their work. So thanks for listening. Talk to you on the next episode.
