Insane prices in Europe

[thilo]

I've bought the Rigol 1052E from one of the official German distributors: http://www.batronix.com/versand/oszilloskope/Rigol-DS1052E.html The price is reasonable if you assume $400 without taxes (and you have to pay those if you buy in US or someplace else).

And for multimeters, check out voelkner.de they have the more reasonable prices in Germany.

[Kiriakos-GR]

Kiriakos-GR,

Do you know if "www.netscope.gr" sells for other countries in Europe?
Those prices arte amizingly cheaper than in other stores like Conrad for example.

Well some of their prices are with out VAT 23%.
Still you can email them, and learn the details.
mmylonas(at)netscope.gr

[Pfex]

Hi all.

I have contacted a random supplier on Alibaba regarding the Hakko FX-888.
They offered me the following prices:

  1x  Hakko FX-888 @ 100$/piece
10x Hakko FX-888  @   80$/piece

If you put 24% VAT and a ~30% margin on that you could sell them for around 100 Euro. + ~15-20 Euro to ship them around Europe.
This is about what you find at the moment on ebay ... give or take ~10 Euro.

Please keep in mid that virtually all US prices that you see do NOT include VAT and tax ... so that 80$ that you see for the Hakko FX-888  on Amazon might not be what you will actually end up paying.

[Oracle]

Hi there,

I just wanted to buy Rigol 1052 as Dave suggested and Hakko FX-888.
The soldering station goes for around ~80$ in US which is 55 Euros.
The prices in Germany start from 150 Euros.
The same goes for Rigol.
400$ is something like 270Euros whereas in Germany I can get it for something like 550 Euros.
Insane!

Where do you buy your things in Europe?

you are lucky to live in Germany.... I live in Italy, and is more expansive than Germany, i can assure you...

[Oracle]

I adopted this strategy: get an "indirect" discount: go to your boss and ask if you can buy things with agency credential,and then when the things arrive, you give him money... This worked for me: i got a PLC OVER discounted by 60%.... +VAT (I hate VAT, should be abolished!)

[G7PSK]

For some reason anything that is say $100.00 dollars in the US will be £100.00 pounds in the UK plus VAT and has been as long as I can remember and would appear to have nothing to do with import duties or where it is made. More to do with the costs of operating here in the UK and the greed of traders and local authorities who make the cost of trading so high.

[free_electron]

here's my strategy : leave europe and move to the US. Worked great for me

[T4P]

Hi all.

I have contacted a random supplier on Alibaba regarding the Hakko FX-888.
They offered me the following prices:

  1x  Hakko FX-888 @ 100$/piece
10x Hakko FX-888  @   80$/piece

If you put 24% VAT and a ~30% margin on that you could sell them for around 100 Euro. + ~15-20 Euro to ship them around Europe.
This is about what you find at the moment on ebay ... give or take ~10 Euro.

Please keep in mid that virtually all US prices that you see do NOT include VAT and tax ... so that 80$ that you see for the Hakko FX-888  on Amazon might not be what you will actually end up paying.

On alibaba all bets are off that it's actually the real one with the mcu.

[mariush]

If you want the Hakko FX-888, probably the best would be to get it from Adafruit... it's 95$ there :  https://www.adafruit.com/products/303

Add about 40-50$ for shipping to Romania (or other EU countries), and maybe you'll pay 3-5% customs fees and 24% VAT in Romania if your customs officer isn't "friendly" or they send the package through DHL or some shipper that calculates the taxes in advance.

Still better than 160-180 euro + 24% VAT, about the price on the local market.  Sure, it's the 110v version but 110v to 220-240v converters are cheap.

For the RIGOL, I guess you could try your luck with Dealextreme but I'd go for Batronix if you're in Europe: http://www.batronix.com/shop/oscilloscopes/Low-Cost-Oscilloscopes.html

[Oracle]

here's my strategy : leave europe and move to the US. Worked great for me

If I only have a chance, don't you believe I leave this country?

[senso]

When I bought my Rigol I posted here that Batronix was having a discount on them, I got mine for 300€ with free shipping, the site is here:
http://www.batronix.com/shop/oscilloscopes/Rigol-DS1052E.html

Its even cheaper now, I recommend that shop and they are in Germany, so you might as well get free or pretty cheap shipping.

As for the Hakko, I understand you, I also tried to buy one from the official Hakko distributor and when they told me it costs 150€ I fainted, but buying one from USA for 60-70€, and paying 20€ for shipping and then getting hit with huge customs fees, VAT and what-not, its better to buy it already from a shop in Europe, because it will have the same or a very identical final price.

[T4P]

Well, actually even if the euro stays the same i understand that many countries are hit with massive customs fees and VAT - am i right?

But still doesn't even match up what's going on here and Oz, 200dollars for a station that is made in a neighbouring country with nothing special!
I was like if it was 100$ it would be decent BUT HELL NO!

You know the hakko mantra ... the further you go the cheaper it gets

[mariush]

T4P, it depends...

Here in Romania, the national post offices that handle packages from outside EU are VERY busy, so usually if they see packages coming from a person to another person, they just let it go after checking the contents
If it's from a company, it's debatable, it depends on the mood and the value of the packages. If it's something worth 100-150$, at least in my town there's chances the customs officer won't bother to spend 15 minutes of his time filling forms to get me to pay a few dollars in customs fees.

For electronics I would have to pay around 3% in customs fees and 24% vat... but there's exceptions. The law says that you don't pay customs fees if the value is below 45 euro, and also you don't pay customs fees if the products were ordered ONLINE and they're worth less than 150 euro... so yeah, you think the customs officer is going to try to prove the package was NOT ordered online?
There's also a rule saying you don't pay VAT for packages worth less than 10 euro... so if there's no invoice in the package, you can just say that multimeter was 9.90 euro

Now it's a whole different story with USPS or DHL ... USPS at least computes the VAT and customs fees (if the package is worth more than 150 euro) before they even talk to you so when they come you have to pay the fees to get the package.

[elCap]

Japan prices are also quite insane. Some examples
Solder iron Hakko FX-888: $175
Multimeter Fluke 87-5: $640
Rigol DG1022 (20MHz arb func gen): $2150
Rigol DG4102 (100MHz arb func gen): $2000

But what's good about living in Japan is that mains is 100V and therefore possible order stuff from US. And the customs rarely require you to pay import taxes, and if they do it's only 5%.

Anyway, move to US is good suggestion!

[M. András]

i always love the currency exchange rates when its about product prices us 500 usd europe 500 euro

[marmad]

For electronics I would have to pay around 3% in customs fees and 24% vat... but there's exceptions. The law says that you don't pay customs fees if the value is below 45 euro, and also you don't pay customs fees if the products were ordered ONLINE and they're worth less than 150 euro... so yeah, you think the customs officer is going to try to prove the package was NOT ordered online?
There's also a rule saying you don't pay VAT for packages worth less than 10 euro... so if there's no invoice in the package, you can just say that multimeter was 9.90 euro

Romania is a member of the EU, right?  Digital oscilloscopes and many other test instruments made in China are duty free (doesn't matter about the price). The amount that you must pay is based on the TARIC code (9030 20 30 90 for Chinese DSO) and tariff which you can look up at the Taxation and Customs Union site (the link is a for Chinese-made osciloscope):

http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/dds2/taric/measures.jsp?Lang=en&SimDate=20121109&Area=CN&Taric=9030203090&LangDescr=en

The best thing is to do the research yourself, and then have the shipper put the correct TARIC code in the documentation (because customs officials are generally idiots). Of course, you still have to pay VAT on price + shipping if they check.

Correction: Reading through TARIC documentation, I noticed this:

"The TARIC DDS site allows searching for a product code based on its description. This function does not guarantee that a code retrieved in this way will be accepted by the Customs offices if used in a declaration."

Basically, it says that your local Customs office may screw you over. I think the best thing to do, if thinking of importing an expensive measuring device with 0% duty tariff (and you're not worried about paying VAT), is to FIRST contact your Customs office with the TARIC code and get them to either/disagree with the published tariff in writing; in other words:

"In order to obtain written classification information, it is advised to ask for a "Binding Tariff Information" (BTI) in the country of importation. Since it is the national customs authorities that are responsible for issuing binding tariff information, please send your request to the competent customs authorities of the Member State concerned. The names and addresses of these authorities can be found in the Official Journal of the EC C 126 of 23.05.2008, page 11."

But what's good about living in Japan is that mains is 100V and therefore possible order stuff from US.

This used to matter more (I know from being an American living in Europe), but nowadays almost everything important operates from 100-240V / 50-60Hz.