Experience with international orders

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_Maximus_

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As Ive never ordered anything from Amazon before, or anything from an overseas company for that matter, id like to know more about the costs of importing anything from a HDDs to PSUs (it seems there is a flat fee for shipping?)

Lets say an item costs 100$; Im taking this for example: http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technolog...1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1316341699&sr=1-1

With the dollar/rand exchange rate at 7.4; The item will cost R740 without any shipping or any import costs.

Then we add shipping costs. Amazon specifies 39.99$ per shipment plus 4.99$ x (item weight). With this product weighing in at 1 pound, we land up at 45$ (rounded off). Which converts to R333. This is with priority shipping - the only option available for hardware.

So that comes to R1073.
SARS gets in on the deal when it arrives in SA and takes 14% of 110% of the item value, which comes to an additional R114. (R740x1.1x0.14)

All in all our item comes to R1187.
There might be a clearance fee on the item as well? Im not too sure.

So if anyone has ordered anything through amazon, can they tell me if im on the right track here? And any updates on the clearance fee?
Lastly, delivery times? Amazon says 3 to 6 days - is this accurate at all?

Thanks for the help! :)
 
Tell them to mark as gift and not to put the invoice in the package and you won't get charged vat.
 
_Maximus_ said:
So thats a definite no to hardware? I dont understand why they would mention it in their delievery times and fees then? sigh..confusion!
Its found here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_nodeid_596184_africa?nodeId=596186
Click to expand...

If you have an account with Amazon - i.e. have an Amazon cookie on your machine - the product page displays a warning stating that they cannot ship the product to your default delivery address.

In that case you can have Amazon deliver to myus.com, who will in turn ship to you.
 
noxibox said:
This advice is completely wrong.
Click to expand...
Agreed. As a matter of fact, Customs do not take kindly to that practice at all. They will still require you to take the invoice with when you go to collect the package.
 
rrh said:
If you have an account with Amazon - i.e. have an Amazon cookie on your machine - the product page displays a warning stating that they cannot ship the product to your default delivery address.

In that case you can have Amazon deliver to myus.com, who will in turn ship to you.
Click to expand...

Interesting idea. Might be worthwhile as a lot of the goods mentioned that are available on takelot.co.za/uk and /usa are lank pricy compared to local dealers. Seems like a decent alternative to paying exorbitant prices.
 
http://www.memoryc.com/

they ship to s.a for 9 euro, they sell ssd and Ram mostly.

3 imports me and my friends did , 2 was charged for vat, 1 big one actually was not charged lol

cost is the exchange rate + 0.20 per dollar, paypal charges, if you use them , i prefer using that.

then just the 9 dollars shipping.

and vat if they catch you.

currently have a 240gig ovz vertex 2 for R2500(for my friend) on its way and 8gb ripjaws memory for R400 for me, from memoryc :P
 
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I think it's wiser to have the package clearly marked as what it is. Saves the charges they apply to the packages if you have to go fetch it at the hub instead of at the local PO.

Have had many an experience with this regarding the stuff I import regularly. Have had to actually tell sellers to make sure they declare the real value and make 100% sure it's not marked as a gift.

Max gifts you can have per person per year is R3k I think. Not entirely sure on the figure.
 
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