SA computer hardware imports

The biggest problem we face is the exceptional greed and anti-competitive behaviour of the middle man and some ofthe retailers in South Africa. I used to purchase only in South Africa but the days of doing that are gone. I now purchase a lot of my goods in the United States and ship them out here. They still land at a much cheaper rate than if I were to purchase them in South Africa. I am about to leave for a trip to the US for meetings and I needed to puchase two DSLR cameras. I priced a canon 50D camera with lens in RSA and it sells for around R 16,000.00. The same camera and lens through an online site in the US selsls for a little over R 7000.00. How can the imnporters in South Africa even begin to justify such a price difference? The economy? Rubbish!
 
What's the chance the people interviewed will even see these posts?
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Not phased on your sarcasm. The difference between the cycling community and IT is that cycling is more organised in doing these orders.

When I was in IT I use to have a good laugh at the few individuals that would order goods from overseas - if they all bought their imported goods from the store I worked at, it might have boosted sales by 1% pa ... so no dent in anyones pockets.


Unlike cycling where just the Argus online orders was enough to keep over 15 stores comfortably in business for a year!


Until the IT community can start denting the income of local suppliers then please post your wow in lowercase :D and perhaps expand your range of goods purchased to beyond RAM and GPU - last time I built a PC, they where not the only components I used :)
Click to expand...


Ahhh good old CRC :p
I wonder when the next order is getting setup? i should check to see cos there are a bunch of things I need to get from there.
 
And then there is the usual freight and shipping insurance fees which according to Greenway is the single biggest cost component for any importer regardless of where they are based in the world.
Click to expand...

Freight.. lol probally R20,000 for a full 12m(60m3) container of goods.. how many GFX cards or monitor's can you fit in a container.. . plently

factor in that most stuff in duty free.. I call BS
 
greggpb said:
Freight.. lol probally R20,000 for a full 12m(60m3) container of goods.. how many GFX cards or monitor's can you fit in a container.. . plently

factor in that most stuff in duty free.. I call BS
Click to expand...

You are seriously deluded if you think shipping costs are that low
 
brentmin said:
The biggest problem we face is the exceptional greed and anti-competitive behaviour of the middle man and some ofthe retailers in South Africa. I used to purchase only in South Africa but the days of doing that are gone. I now purchase a lot of my goods in the United States and ship them out here. They still land at a much cheaper rate than if I were to purchase them in South Africa. I am about to leave for a trip to the US for meetings and I needed to puchase two DSLR cameras. I priced a canon 50D camera with lens in RSA and it sells for around R 16,000.00. The same camera and lens through an online site in the US selsls for a little over R 7000.00. How can the imnporters in South Africa even begin to justify such a price difference? The economy? Rubbish!
Click to expand...
From which shop? I have recently compared local to US prices for cameras, and once VAT, shipping etc. is factored in the import price was suprisingly close to the local price, and more suprisingly somewhat more in certain cases. Of course if someone happens to be travelling there anyway they can cut out the shipping cost.

cbrunsdonza said:
When I was in IT I use to have a good laugh at the few individuals that would order goods from overseas - if they all bought their imported goods from the store I worked at, it might have boosted sales by 1% pa ... so no dent in anyones pockets.
Click to expand...
They're laughing because they saved money.

Drake2007 said:
A sad fact of this country is that we manufacture hardly any IT equipment ourselves, and why should any Global IT company want to manufacture on our shores with a) zero skills, b) high taxes, and not to mention c) our cr@p internet.
Click to expand...
How many Western countries do manufacture locally?
 
A topic that truly grates my balls.....:sick:

I fully agree with the general sentiment. The problem does lie with the local distributors. The dealer price is more often than not more than the US retail price (incl tax and shipping).

A prime example would be Rectron who has sole rights to the Gigabyte brand. They have priced the Gigabyte hardware esp motherboards so high that is is unfeasible and basically stupid to build a PC with this respected brand. Asus is not far behind but a little better.

Items such as cases, hard drives, memory (except premium brands like Corsair, OCZ, GSkill etc), optical drives and Intel CPU's (except the Qud cores) are generally very close to the US retail prices (from our distributors). Why is it so far out for things like Graphics cards, motherboards and power supplies? If it was overpriced for everything it would seem more plausible.... so I don't buy the "ecomomies of scale" bulldust.

Also I bought a Samsung 23.6" LCD from a local RETAIL store for the same price that Frontosa had it listed on their dealer pricelist (EX VAT)!!!!!

Last but not least......... everywhere else in the world AMD CPU's and mobos are MUCH cheaper than their Intel counterparts and provide a means to build decent budget gaming PC's with lesser performance but at a lower price point. Also AMD mobos also generally offer more value for money by offering more features like firewire, hot-plug SATA etc on cheaper models.

But the cherry on the cake is definitely Graphics cards which can be anything up to 150% more here.


How do I go about shipping in my own Graphics cards etc?
 
When importing laptops from the US is power supply an issue since we use 220V and they use 110V?
 
BrendanD said:
When importing laptops from the US is power supply an issue since we use 220V and they use 110V?
Click to expand...

Today most power supplies on electronic equipment are "universal" and will adjust to the input voltage.

Having said that, it will take you less than a minute to check whether there is a manual voltage setting.
 
And worse case you just need to buy a 'local' transformer power unit, which should be ok if its not an ibm or check the input voltage requirements or just simply get a step down transformer(since you don't need regulation as its still ac)
 
Look at watch market and you will see another market where consumer is ripped off,
buy from Skywatches - Singapore with International Warranties
Much cheaper than Amazon.com

Buy 2 watches Internationally for the price of 1 watch locally
Seiko SNA411P1 Seiko Chronograph Tachymeter 200m Pilot R1453 (excl VAT on Import)
American Swiss R3999

Need to find a similar shop in the Far East to buy Computer peripherals
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X