To import or not to import?

[wilkinsi]

At what point do you decide to import from USA or Japan? Is it for the spec, the availability, the time, or the price?

There are specific guitars I want to add to my collection, but some are either due too late to enter the UK, can't be bought in the UK at all/need to be ordered from abroad, or are simply cheaper. I have read elsewhere some people have ordered from outside the UK, but wound up paying just as much if not more as a result of import duty and VAT. On the other hand, there are limited edition guitars (DK2M white bengal for example) which are only available in USA anyway.

So how do you decide?

[neilli]

Forgetting that I'm now in Canada, I pretty much gave up buying in the UK about 4 or 5 years ago.

I kept an eye on ebay and a few store websites, but when I wanted something specific, I got it from the US. Yeah, shipping is a pain, but I always saved a decent chunk of cash. Taxes and duty is also nasty, but far less than spending 2000 GBP on a black soloist! Of course, the shipping cost is a much bigger proportion of a cost on an import than a USA or CS guitar, so personally, I wouldn't bother bringing those in...

[fett]

Just get off your arse and buy one here. Just fly over to get it. Take it apart and ship it back in pieces. Man. I am I glad I live in the good old USofA.:ROTF:

[wilkinsi]

Well Fett, if you can take a neck off a neckthru guitar, then restore it to it's original glory, I'll eat my hat (I don't have one! ). I'm not flying over there because I'll drown on my left lung's fluid via a phneumathorax (sp?) i.e.: punctured in 2001. I still have trouble with it 7 years later. Even if I survived, think of the cost of the flight, plus accommodation.