On Mon, 19 Jan 2004 23:33:23 -0000, "al"
wrote:

"Bob Minchin" wrote in message
...
Don't forget the cost of delivery and excise duty (and VAT I think)
which is helpfully levied on the goods value plus the insurance plus the
carriage.
The tax is collected by the carrier on behalf of HMCE who allow them to
charge a extra admin/commission fee on top. There is little chance of
escaping this tax. Personal experience!!


Delivery is $235, which sounds a lot, but with the current exchange rates
still works out damn cheap! The VAT and/or excise duty however I'd be
interested to hear more about. Do I just have to pay 17.5% when it arrives?
Who do I pay? How does it work? If they charge admin, can you pre-pay this
to avoid it if there is no chance of it "slipping through"?


That's expensive for shipment.

I would consider buying the more expensive and lighter weight
components in the U.S. and cheaper, heavier stuff locally.

Regarding importation costs, there is certainly 17.5% VAT, but there
is no duty.

If the supplier uses somebody like DHL or Fedex, they will generally
contact you when the goods arrive in the UK and ask you for a credit
card number before clearing and delivering the goods. If you use
them more than a couple of times, they will set up and account for you
and you will simply receive an invoice for the VAT some time after the
goods are delivered.

On anything coming via a courier firm, items will not escape VAT.

In terms of on-line suppliers in the U.S., I have had good success
with www.provantage.com. In many, but not all cases if a reasonable
sized order is placed, the pricing is quite a bit less even with
shipping taken into account.

Another thing that you could consider is to make a shopping trip to
the U.S. Airfares are currently very cheap - for example, I had
an email from Virgin today offering a promotional fare to New York or
Washington for £179 and San Francisco for £219.

If you were to do that, you can bring back goods personally and on
entry to the UK, you have a duty and VAT free allowance of £145.
One note is that you can't put this towards a more expensive item - it
has to be smaller items or item coming together to this figure.
So for the purposes of a PC you would need to buy it as bits.
Over and above that you pay VAT. In practice, I have found that if
you have not gone hugely over the figure and haven't brought booze or
tobacco then they will let it all go.

If you do the sums on that, you can actually do a trip, take in some
tourist stuff if you want and buy computer pieces and pay the same or
less than having it shipped.

One thing to bear in mind is that you don't get all the consumer
protection legislation and returns are going to be harder. On the
other hand, you can take a view on that on the argument that no one
single item in the machine is likely to cost more than £100-150 and
take a risk. I've done that for a few years and have not had
significant problems. I had a dud motherboard once, value about
$80, so am not too concerned. Obviously it pays to buy well known
products.





a


..andy

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