Buying boards from US online from UK

flounderbout · Outlaw Joined: 30 Sep 2006 Posts: 224 City: London

Has anyone in the UK ordered boards and bindings from the US, whether through Ebay or from commercial sites?
If so what is the sketch with the tax situation and/or any import duties?
Also what sort of shipping rates have people paid?
Yes, I know I should be supporting my local board shop and I won't get a warranty. But seriously when kit is 500 bucks online (i.e. £250) and £700 here, then my loyalty gets a little stretched. After all I pay my annual membership fees and ride as often as I can at my local site (at great expense) (where I ride is also where my local shop is), so I am putting food in their mouths.
So no rants about what a bastard I am please...

wviveen · Addict Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 705 City: Loosdrecht

I once bought a board from the US and had it shipped to the Netherlands.
I had to pay VAT (19%) + import duties (3%). And of course there were some shipping costs. In the end it still was a lot cheaper, although the board took very long to get here. Shipping it fast will cost you a lot more.

arctic_pitbull · Criminal Joined: 19 May 2007 Posts: 59 City: San Diego

Bought from California to Norway using ebay with no troubles at all. Paid no taxes coz the seller marked it with value: 20 $ (wonder what the customs people were thinking)

TJ

LF_WaKeR · Outlaw Joined: 01 Feb 2008 Posts: 191 City: Mil-town

Dont worry about the whole shop deal. I never buy boards from shops because you can always find them cheaper online.

K-dub · Ladies Man Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 14760

Brit Rider · Posted: Feb 20, 2008 3:39 am Post subject:

flounderbout, Its a touch call; support your local board shop but pay 30% more than in the states 9once shipped and taxes paid) or just buy from the states and let the UK guys go bust.

I guess it comes down to conscience and your view point on the big picture.

flounderbout · Outlaw Joined: 30 Sep 2006 Posts: 224 City: London

That's an easy swipe, but I think this is a serious issue that is probably worthy of a bit more thought than that. So I am going to take a deep deep breath and launch into my take on it all.

Firstly, what are the savings realistically? From all my researches on the web, purchase price savings vary from 30 - 60%. For the sake of argument take a fairly standard package, a 137 PS3 with Transits. In the UK online, £480, i.e. $960. Online in the US, $500. Then assume shipping of $60 - 80 (which is the best of the quotes which I have had so far). Then add roughly 20% for VAT and import taxes.

US package - $680 odd
UK package - $960

So the UK price is 40% more. For a standard package this is a real saving of £140. For more high end stuff, this might be more like £200.

Secondly though, this is not a fair price comparison. Because from the local UK guy (and the local shop may or may not reflect UK online prices), you also get a) advice on the product, b) a warranty, and maybe even a demo (plus a warm cuddly feeling from having helped feed the guy's kids).

There are a lot of people who take advice on the product from their local guy, and then go and buy the real thing cheaper elsewhere. To all of them, that stinks. If you are going to take advantage of your local friendly supplier's goodwill, then don't shaft him a minute later. For my part though there is plenty of advice on various forums etc as to which kit to buy, so I am happy to take a chance. Without a demo I think kit advice is completely worthless anyway frankly, though that may be just me, and it is almost impossible to get a demo in the UK now because retailers keep so little stock. As for the warranty, the value of that is a matter of simple maths. For the warranty to be worth paying twice the price, there have to be problems in 1 in every 2 boards. For it to be worth the 40% UK hike, problems in 2 in 5 boards. I don't find this realistic, although I may just have been lucky with boards.

So there is a large and very real saving in real terms buying from abroad, and in particular from the US. The first issue then is why there should be this huge discrepancy? Obviously the dollar exchange rate helps. But it is hardly the whole answer. There is no way a cheap exchange rate can account for more than around 10% rrp levels. The real answer is found in the fact that most US stores are not allowed contractually to sell abroad, a condition written into their contracts with their suppliers. Why? Because the suppliers know they can charge a seriously inflated price abroad (as with many products), particularly in the UK. It is the supplier setting the UK price, not something connected with economies of scale or anything else. And that is obvious from the fact that the UK retailers could afford to buy US stock at retail prices and ship it for cheaper than they can buy at trade prices direct from the retailers.

So far, a no brainer. Why the hell shouldn't I spend a bit of time and effort getting round what is effectively a price cartel imposed by the suppliers purely as a result of UK market conditions, and save myself a few hundred quid in the process?

And yes, the answer is that the guy trying to carve out a living in a small shop somewhere in the UK is probably a great guy who teaches the local kids to ride and is generally a nice bloke who most of us on the forum would want to get along with and support. Having said that, I am not sure it is fair to blame the consumer. Sure it would be great if the world worked by paying nice guys a premium for not being some sort of corporate faceless wonder. And I suppose stuff like fair trade goods shows that market forces can accommodate that. But the question has to be just how much of a premium can those same market forces bear? Ask yourself whether you would actually pay the extra on a purchase from your local shop if they added these as optional extras on your purchase. £50 on £500? £100 on £500? Or the £200 on £500 premium you get because you live in the UK? I suspect that most people that give it lots about supporting the local shop would find handing over £200 a bit hard to stomach just for the good of the guy that runs the shop.

Like I said at the outset, I pay handsomely to ride at my local centre, and so I make them a profit. I also admire and respect their enthusiasm and advice, and want them to do well. But I reckon paying £200 to do so because I need a new board and boots is a bit of a piss take. After all my income doesn't get determined on whether or not I am a nice guy (maybe just as well!). My income gets determined on having to compete hard against the rest of the world on an even footing. So I don't have the luxury of being able to spend whatever takes my fancy.

Meanwhile, what have the manufacturers got to say about all of this? They are presumably watching all their UK sales dry up because of competition from the US and yet they still insist on charging a ludicrous premium. And their response is not to drop UK prices to something sensible, but instead to try and put in place barriers to international sales in the US so that they can maintain inflated prices over here. What about their F*£$ing loyalty to all these local retailers? Mad

I would love to hear a coherent reasoned explanation from any representative of a board manufacturer explaining the level of prices in the UK. And if there isn't one, then isn't it about time that someone started putting pressure on the manufacturers to give our UK retailers a fair deal?

Congratulations to anyone who got this far and is still awake... Embarassed

brutto 76 · Newbie Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 27

I'm very much with you on this flounderbout but here's a few thoughts about why boards cost more in the shops here...

There seems to be a general rule across all sorts of products that we Brits will pay Pounds for Dollars. And with the exchange rate at around $1.95 to the Pound that means that we are usually paying almost double for the same same item. This may have made sense in the past but not now.

One contributor to the problem is Value Added Tax. Around 15% of what we pay for a board (and most other things except food, books and children's clothes) in the UK goes to government as VAT.

Another thing - there is always a distributor involved in the UK. The distributor buys from Hype or LF or whoever and the shop buys from them. That's another mouth to feed. And the distributors don't seem to give the same service that the manufacturers do. I often hear about how great the service is from LF or CWB or Hype in the US but I've tried to get answers from several UK distributors about availability and spares and got no response at all.

Also all of the infrastructure costs are higher in the UK - shop rents, utilities, fuel, wages. Overheads have to be paid for by higher prices.

Finally, there are some UK retailers who will work hard to match US prices and go the extra mile to deliver great service (one of them is frequent contributor here - you know who you are). I totally respect these guys and try whenever possible to buy from them because their business model works out good for me too.

K-dub · Ladies Man Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 14760

flounderbout, you broke the forum rules reguarding post length about 10 times in one post. Laughing

j/k for those with broken sarcasm meters.

there are quite a few of them around here lately.

flounderbout · Outlaw Joined: 30 Sep 2006 Posts: 224 City: London

K-dub - Its because I fell asleep 8 times during the one reply. And every time I woke up I'd dreamed a bit more up...
Embarassed

And brutto, yes part of the problem is the distributors and their overheads. But in the age of the global economy, and when shipping from the US is a pretty straightforward affair, what exactly is the point of a distributor unless they can reduce these sort of costs? After all, the usual reason to have a distributor in a country to which your product is exported is that they can sort out all the logistical nightmares of getting stuff there. When it really ain't that hard, then either they are unnecessary, or they are charging too much. Or both.
It can't make sense as an business model for a punter like me to be able to source and ship a single board for less than it costs when a distributor who is shipping tens or hundreds is involved. What the hell happened to economies of scale!?!

brutto 76 · Newbie Joined: 13 Apr 2005 Posts: 27

Agree 100%. I'm not defending distributors at all - they seem to be a total waste of space.