Buying from Overseas, say Germany

J

JGlacken

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Does anybody know what additional costs, hassels or taxes are involved? Customs duty and how it is figured? Customs agent needed to clear items? This would be a used item.
 
There is additional paperwork that needs to be completed by the sender for international shipments. Depending upon the carrier there are usually additional brokerage fees charged for clearing customs, in addition to the duty and taxes. Depending upon your state tax may be collected along with the other fees upon delivery or are your responsibility to pay later. Details on duty rates can be found here for your reference. For used items I believe that the declared value is what would be used to determine relevant taxes and duty. Hope this helps!
 
This is unrelated to the OP question; but, I know of an individual that somewhat frequently buys overseas. A concern is legitimacy of the seller. This person will ask the potential foreign seller to hold his passport up next to the item being sold and take a picture and email it to him. This quickly separates the legit sellers from the non-legit.

The person I am thinking of bought an expensive pre-amp from Germany this way.
 
Le Roy, great idea! Larry

Odyssey said:
This is unrelated to the OP question; but, I know of an individual that somewhat frequently buys overseas. A concern is legitimacy of the seller. This person will ask the potential foreign seller to hold his passport up next to the item being sold and take a picture and email it to him. This quickly separates the legit sellers from the non-legit.

The person I am thinking of bought an expensive pre-amp from Germany this way.
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There is a duty you have to pay - I believe it is 2% IF the item is made outside the US (I'm mentioning this as I sold several US made items to the US and buyers didn't have to pay duty; sometimes it involved a several emails though).

Shipping of a single component like a preamp or a DAC is around $200-$300, so not that bad.
 
Ask for the serial # and the shop name that sold him the speakers. Then contact the shop via the email address published on the shop's website to verify they know the seller and have indeed sold the speaker to him.
 
Scammers have been doing this since the inception of ebay. I would ask for skype details, passport and driving license. skype them and ask for the unit to be shown directly. You can also check on serial numbers with manufacture.
 
If your importing by air shipping and customs is easy to deal with. If however your importing large speakers which are using sea freight you must declare the paper work to customs in the usa within 10 days of the items leaving port from Germany. I shipping out my older legacy audio whisper speakers to a buyer over at avs forum. Intially he ran into problems but eventually got the issue sorted out. Importing into the usa is straight forward. It's sea shipments which is slightly more hassle but not a big deal.
 
Elberoth said:
Lots of scammers online nowadays.
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Beware of this Dude--he is known to scam Hi End Products from German Websites as his own-- I have friends that lost out big time to him--Avoid !

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I hate scammers, cheaters, liars, thief's.... hey should all be thrown in jail... they make is vastly harder for honest people... scum of the earth if you ask me.
 
Keep in mind power in Germany is 220V, and in audio not all equipment has a switchable 110/220 power supply. The power cables are also different, but that isn't a big deal. So if it's electronics or active speakers, research it carefully. As to scams, they are everywhere, so watch out for legitimacy wherever you buy. There are very respected vendors that sell and ship direct.
 
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