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Jan
10
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Buying internationally, i.e. ordering from a non-UK seller for delivery to the UK, is how many early adopters obtained their eBook readers but there are issues to be taken into account before you do so.
The main issue is that warranty cover is likely to be harder to obtain when you’re not in the same country as the vendor – There are often workarounds but they add time and cost to the process, if it’s needed. The other issues are related to the additional costs involved in obtaining the reader, both the straight-forward delivery costs but also the various costs associated with tax and duty charges, which can quickly mount up.
As an example, let’s take a look at an example of ordering a Sony Reader Touch Edition from the US. (This model was chosen as we can compare with the cost involved in buying it within the UK, while the seller used to provide the example costs, B & H Photo, is one of the relatively few US retailers who are happy to ship internationally
The current price of the Black version on the B & H Photo web-site is $279.99.
There’s free shipping in the US, but to ship internationally, their cheapest option is “UPS Worldwide Saver”, offering a delivery estimate of 3-5 business days for $51.80. OK, so far, but there’s more, as there’s also various charges for tax/duty, totaling another $101.52, broken down as follows…
| Details of Duty Charges | |
|---|---|
| VAT: | $51.61 |
| Duties: | $12.28 |
| Disbursement: | $17.62 |
| Security & Handling: | $5.01 |
| Carrier Surcharge: | $15.00 |
| —— | |
| Total: | $101.52 |
Adding the cost of the Reader, the shipping and the duty together gives a grand total of $433.31, which is almost exactly £270 at the current exchange rate. This, however, compares with a street price of around £220 for a UK-sourced item, which shows it’s not always the cheap option.
Now, there are options that might bring the price down – for instance, there are companies that provide you with a US shipping address and will then repack/forward your items internationally. In this case, if you can find one that will do this for less than the UPS fee of $51.80 you’d be able to reduce your costs there, although it would take longer to reach you. If you opted to pay the duty on delivery, you’d probably be able to save the “Disbursement” and “Security & Handling” items, but you’d find that your item would again take longer to reach you, as you’d need to pay the other costs (VAT, Duty & Carrier Surcharge) before the shipping company would dispatch it to the last leg of it’s journey from arrival in the UK to you.
Anyway, the bottom-line is that while buying internationally does mean that you can get hold of products that haven’t been released in the UK, when considering it as an option it’s essential to include the associated costs – in this example, they add more than $150 to the item cost!
