Buying a MBP from America (to Australia)

[neilspartacus]

why are they costly outside US in the first place...

I currently live in India on work and did observe the same over pricing of apple products here. I got all my apple gads when i travel to US and come back here to India.
I was kind of surprised the hardware for almost all of apple products are made in countries like china or so which is very near to India or other asian countries....
Why are they so much overpriced compared to US? I Always had this doubt...the thread was trying to tell how to get it from US so do someone know why they are so costly?

 

[iPhil]

It all comes down to greed my friend. I just did some maths on the mini I am away to order. UK price for top spec - £658 all in. Us price - $1153 = £588 all in. That is £70 uk or $137 usa difference. As they are both shipped from taiwan, which is rougly equidistant from London and New York, the shipping costs the same. Apple also charge 21% sales tax in Europe. Actual sales tax in the UK is only 17.5%, so they are "stealing" an extra 3.5% for no reason whatsoever.

The reason why apple has a wide area of prices on the products is:


The Currency Markets moves 24/7/365 ... So it's hard to pin down a 'worldwide' price with the Currency markets moving every second of the day ..

 

[Cliff3]

Since I will soon be relocating to Sydney for the next few years (for work), your question piqued my curiousity. So I did some checking. The FedEx country profile for Australia talks about importation costs in an understandable way. In a nutshell, using your entry level MBP as the example:

US item cost: US$1,999
Customs duty (5%): US$100
Shipping cost: US$200 (estimated FedEx charge)

Value of the Taxable Importation: US$2,199 (item plus transportation costs)
10% GST on 2199: US$219.90

Total US$2,519
Total A$2,865 (using today's rate of exchange)

And the price on the apple.com.au store is A$2,899. Apple is obviously not going to be paying retail for shipping, but they also have to hedge currency fluctuations and may adjust the base price a bit higher to accommodate that.

I don't think Amazon ships internationally, but Mac Connection does. I've bought a fair bit of stuff from them and they've been great. I would think you can count on paying customs duties and GST on goods ordered in this fashion, so it may be easier to just buy it locally.

AppleCare's documentation indicates the warranty is honored worldwide and I have no reason to doubt that. Under AppleCare, the system board, display, and hard drive were replaced on my Powerbook. My MBP will be heading to the repair depot soon for a new display - there are a lot of dead pixels. On a laptop, I feel AppleCare is worth every penny.

The power sources on my Apple goodies are all dual voltage and I'll just need plug converters to use them in Australia.

 

[NKA]

If you need a custom spec, unfortunatly Amazon is no go

My research has lead me to two options.
The first is to use the following service

http://www.bongous.com/personal_shopper.php

Anyone used it before? They will buy it for you, repackage it and forward it to you.

The other option for me living in here in the UK is to Fly to Boston. Why Boston you might ask, well 34 miles north of Boston is the Rockingham Park Mall where there's an Apple Store. Rockingham Park, is in the State of New Hampshire and so has 0% sales tax. This should pay for the flight. Even if I have to pay the VAT at customs it still works out cheaper.

Unfortunaltly the keyboards in the US are different to the ones in the UK (The ones in the UK are a JOKE as they have tiny enter keys). Anyway this means they may be easy for customs to spot if you get stopped....if your not declaring

Just noticed maybe a third option, www.macmall.com's web site say they can also ship internationaly. It's using a foreign issused Credit Card that's the main problem I think.

Anyway, these are the options, I've researched so far. (Got to do somthing while I'm waitiing for the MacBook Pro's to be updated)

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

Do you know anybody in the states? Maybe you could get them to ship it to you. I doubt that there wouldnt be significant savings even AFTER taxes and import duties are imposed.

 

[iMem]

i tried amazon

i tried amazon but its the uk price so its not really cheaper
i tried amazon.com but it sends me to places that deal it in america and they dont ship to uk.
can you send me a link that you know that does sell imac import from outside uk please
i would be very happy if you can

thanks