"Grey" Imports

[Mark L]

You may also need to check closely with overseas "grey" sellers to see if they insist on the good being returned to them in their country as most of the time you will be paying for freight and insurance to return it to them. That figure can add a lot to the cost of the item if it needs to be returned.

Yep, the fine print. I read that print when I bought my camera from site sponsor B&H and if something needing a warranty repair was required I just needed to let them know and they would arrange free postage back to them to get the repairs done.

If I had to pay the local price, I would never have a camera. ......
There is no local supplier here for purchasing such equipment. There is a Hardly Normal in a nearby town,

They think they have a monopoly on camera equipment in that nearby town. They refuse to offer me any decent deal on any camera equipment.( though we have got some good deals on other things from them). They loose any sales from me on photographic equipment. So that's nil in the scheme of things for them.

[bobc163]

Hi arthur,
well certainly "stirred things up" with that posting
What really concerns me is the price difference for the same product both here and overseas!

Point in question
I have a 30 foot yacht which I have owned for at least 30 years. I recently undertook a refurbishment of the entire rig and whilst at it did some upgrading of the equipment.
2 things struck me as being a blatent rip off here
The first was for a rigid boom vang, I found the local distributorand asked his price for the item he explained that some parts were custom made by the manufacturer and the complete item would be imported from the US.
One of my associates advised me to look on line, low and behold here was a US distributor selling the same item for less than half that the Aus dist. was asking. Needlees to say I contacted the US supplier who advised me that certain parts were custom made and the item would be shipped from the US. Guess what I did!!
The second item was a furler by a large international company. Again I tracked the local supplier who said "we have a special for this month if you order now" Asked what was required for the yacht and advised that it would require additional parts at extra cost.
Went to the US distributor who informed me that no additional parts required as they all came with the unit (in fact there was more parts than necessary) not what the Aus distributor was quoting!!
As you can guess I ordered from the US distributor who had the item shipped from France to the US and then to Aus all arrived and at a substantial discount from the Aus supplier
I did however forgetto purchase a small item and went to the Aus distributor to ask them to supply it (cost was irrelavent) they asked where I purchased the furler and said "go back to where you purchased it as we do not want anything to do with your item as you did not purhase it from us" oh and by the way there is no warranty on this item" I subsequently sent an email to the US distributor and received no less than 3 days later an email from the manufacturers head office in France who said "the item has a world wide warranty I will send the part at no cost to you and I will speak to the local distibutor."

This item has dropped significantly in price in AUS now and if I was purchasing it again I would buy from the Aus supplier as they are now more competive with their costs (What does this indicate to you?')

Going back to things photographic, the new lens arrived yesterday as advised from HK (shipped Friday 5PM their time arrived in Newcastle Monday 7AM) A$750 cheaper than local distibutor and "Made in Japan" 12 month warranty with the option to increase to a further 3 years in 30 days of purchase. Same item, same quality
I have purchased equipment in Aus and it has taken up to a week to travel from Sydney to Newcastle with no explanation
I was in China last year and looked at the prices of equipment there and found that the "retail" stores were almost the same price as Aus with a few exceptions

I firmly believe that we are all being "taken for a ride" by someone but as to whom I cannot say in light of the examples above

One must ask why the Aus distributors of products have insited that items will only be warranted by them if purchased through them and international warranties no longer exist on some products.

The old arguments of "freight, Aus costs etc" do not hold water if you look at the real costings of the items

I was on a cruise ship recently and the bar prices increased dramatically when the Aussie's boarded and then increased again on other items as we neared Aus with the xplanation that Aussie's will pay more for the items if they are still cheaper than what they pay at home!!!
The US passnegers that had joined the ship earlier were not impressed to say the least!! and were "muttering in their beards" about the prices being charged by the cruise line in question

Enough for now as I must return to "work'
Bob

[Mark L]

One must ask why the Aus distributors of products have insited that items will only be warranted by them if purchased through them and international warranties no longer exist on some products.

Think you'll find that's what the manufactures impose on them. They have no choice.

[ricktas]

Re your Yacht Bob, that is not just an import vs australian issue.

If you go looking to buy a boat here in Hobart you can expect to pay a lot more for it than you would the same one in Melbourne. My family have bought their last 3 boats from Melbourne, as the same boat in Hobart (exact same model and spec) was over $10K more (the smallest gap). One was $25K more. $10K more simply to move the vessel from Melb to Hobart is not something we were willing to cop. The excuse down here is always 'transport costs'. Yet I can transport that same vessel, with help from the Melb distributor for $1-$2K. I wonder where the other $8K went?

In the end each person has to decide if they want to buy Grey or not. It is not something someone can tell another person to do. It is their decision alone. I have bought 2 cameras and probably 3 lenses, two tablets, and a mobile phone as grey, and never had an issue. I have bought about 5 cameras, 6 lenses, and several mobile phones from Australian stores., and never had an issue.

[ameerat42]

Living in the Antipodes: everyone else is anti the podians
A fabled PM once announced that he was giving us "more choice".
I already mentioned what that means.

Your srry tale left me (almost) speechless. I can only manage to garble something like:
"Sock is a Dig!"

[arthurking83]

Bob! .. I hear what you say re the prices we get charged(or used to get charged) vs what you can do by chasing stuff from online(ie. overseas) sources.

GST has to be taken into account to tho, as the overseas online sales surce won't be charging or adding that into the final price.

There are loud noises being made again about the $1K exemption on GST for personally imported goods again(this time it's not Gerry Harvey tho).

I think that one day this will be inevitable too .. as well as an increase in the GST to help pay for the money losing cycle this is supposedly going to introduce.

But I still feel for the local retailers tho .. even tho they have been ripping us off for, god knows how many, years!

You still have to understand the cost of doing business tho.

The US based yacht selling places probably sell hundreds of not thousands of the product you were referring too. The Aussie based folks probably sell 10 .. maybe 100.
Plus the added cost of extra shipping .. plus the added costs of higher labour charges(compared to the US), payroll taxes, company tax rates ... etc, etc.

The biggest problem with Australia is the lack of foresight on our part.
While many people seem to think they have it(with the loud noises made over the past few years on the state of Aussie manufacturing industries) few seem to actually have it.

These is no way Australia(in the foreseeable future) can compete with many countries in mass market/production situations, but we can still have a healthy manufacturing industry base.
if the Government(Treasury) could only sort out the issue of our over priced currency, what would be ideal is if the Yacht widget or whatnot(you were after) was manufactured here instead, and sold to the US as an export. I'm sure the situation would have been reversed.

For many years up to the point of currency parity(with the US) Nikon Aust were ripping us off so hard with respect to prices.
The Aussie dollar eventually climbed higher than the US, and as a result importing your own Nikon stuff from HK, or wherever was so much cheaper than getting it from a local source.
I think at some point you could easily have saved 1/3rd off the price of a (locally priced) $3K item, going by Nikon Aus's price list.
But they finally succumbed a bit and dropped some of their prices to sane levels.

Something that may or may not be properly understood with respect to the cost of transport, is that this cost is not just the actual shipping of the item(ie. on the container ship from somewhere to here!) but also the cost of the port clearance and the cost of movement from port to a transport depot then onto a (distributor's)warehouse then onto a shop/retailer who may or may not have a centralised distribution centre(which adds more again).
(ps. my job is in transport BTW).
I don't know the actual facts and figures, but I have a suspicion that the cost of the bulk transport stage is only a fraction of the cost of transport(and red tape charges!!) from the docked ship in any Aussie port to the store you collect the item from.
I also have no idea of the warehousing cost for each individual distributor or manufacturer .. but just the rental of the warehouse/offices alone will be in the order of $1/2million annually.
The company I work for is looking to relocate and the rental cost of the warehouse made me cringe!(from one dump to a larger dump ... min annual rental is in the order of $350K .. plus outgoings)

Add to that the cost of the folks that have to manage it, and work it too .. anyhow, I think you get the idea!

While I have no facts or figures, I'm pretty sure that the cost of transport(and labour) going from my experiences of the systems here in Aus is where the cost of transport comes into the equation.
FWIW: years back, in the other transport area I used to work in, one of the regular jobs I used to do was to transport import/export documents from company to banks or loading agents offices, and or VECCI(chamber of commerce) .. just this transfer of documentation could cost in the order of $100-200 alone(something that would otherwise cost a few cents if faxes were allowable in that industry). That was just the courier charge for me to ride/drive from one office to another and wait while docs were stamped and signed, and then to another .. and wait for stamps and signatures .. and so on. This was for the purpose of saving the import/export company, or manufacturer/distributor thousands of dollars in container/dock fees if the documents weren't done ASAP.
While this was many years ago, I have a vague recollection that a 40ft container cost in the order of about $10-15K to move(that is the ship component of the movement from dock to dock).
I have no idea on what it costs now .. could be more .. maybe even less .. but I reckon, to get a container's load from the dock to the appropriate warehouse would now cost at least half that .. maybe $5K .. possibly more.

Just to be sure, my first reply wasn't to 'stir things up' in any way .. just to bring to attention that it doesn't cost nothing for distributor A or manufacturer B to get their goods from point to point.
Of course the value of the goods play a major role in the actual costs of shipping the stuff.
A container of cheap Chinese toys obviously has a lower dollar value than a container of top line photography gear, so the percentage cost of the transportation will be notionally lower for the photography gear. But it's not zero!
Anyhow, my point was to highlight this cost, that it's almost certainly much much higher than for overseas countries, that the government surely makes a hell of a lot of money not just in the taxes .. but also their red tape fees.
Add to that, stupid costs of shipping that can easily be avoided, which probably don't add significantly to the cost of doing business .. that's just me on my soapbox in passing taking advantage of an opportune moment

[bobc163]

Bob! .. I hear what you say re the prices we get charged(or used to get charged) vs what you can do by chasing stuff from online(ie. overseas) sources.
<snip overquote>

Thanks for the reply Arthur,
FyI the Aus distibutor was sending the same item direct to me from the US Manufacturer using the same transport chanells But adding his exorbitant "commision"
I have run my company for over 30 years in Aus and have seen the demise of our manufacturing here "up front" soi much so that I elected top stop designing equipment only to see it "pirated " overseas by our Aussie companies ALL IN THE NAME OF THE ALMIGHTY $
Whilst we ask for our shares and super to give us high yields it is at what cost to our ongoing economy?
I really think that we need to embrace a "global" strategey and ensure that we all pay a FAIR price for our consumerabels not what some person thinks we should pay due to our location Etc

[Glen1]

I've bought a fair bit of gear from the 'grey' market, based purely on price. Never had a problem. Recently though, I bought a Sigma 10-20 from an ebay seller (dcexpert) who I think is affiliated with the Sigma importer(C R Kennedy).The price was better than grey market, and now I'll be seeking my future purchases from the local ebay seller. I also bought a Pentax K5 II from C R Kennedy for a killer price when it was the outgoing model. It pays to send your camera distributor an email, asking for their best price. Saved me a couple of hundred dollars,

Regards
Glen1

[bobt]

It's all a matter of risk assessment. Your purchase price is directly related to the risk you are prepared to accept for the saving you think justifies that risk.

I have rarely bought locally simply because of my own risk assessment. Thus far, I am waaaaaay ahead, and if I get let down by a grey purchase in the future I will still be ahead. Caveat emptor is the key phrase as with most purchases in this world. If you can't afford to lose, then don't gamble.