Buying musical devices similar to guitars, keyboards, microphones and so on has been an expensive job in the event you’re living outside of the USA. Often local music stores inflate their costs they usually find yourself costing you up to THREE TIMES what you’d pay for a neighborhood USA shop. An excessive instance of this might be present in New Zealand where that John Mayer Stratocaster prices $999 USD in the United States, however by the point it is shipped to New Zealand with employees costs, lease costs, inflation, markup and taxes – you will be paying 3 times more! For this very reason many musicians worldwide choose to purchase from USA stores who ship internationally.
Although they have to advertise their products as non-international, a easy phone call to any of those firms can have your item shipped internationally. Most retailers offer DHL, USPS and FEDEX.
For piece of thoughts you possibly can ship DHL/FEDEX but will be paying twice as a lot as USPS rates. USPS have more widespread occurrences of products being damaged in transit, or being lost altogether while FEDEX/DHL are very diligent many of the time. Google the above enterprise names and I am sure you’ll find a shipper who can deliver musical instruments to your international location for a fraction of the worth you may buy at locally. Although do keep in mind currency conversions and 110VOLT/240VOLT adapter differences as you would not need to plugin your new merchandise solely to have it explode because you didn’t take the time to check this minor detail.
Other things to consider when shopping for on-line are:
* Power supplies – do they match your native voltage?
* Warranty – what help will you receive in your country?
* Forex conversions – check your bank rates before buying online!
* PayPal protection – Always shop utilizing PayPal so that you could be covered in the occasion of problems.
* Import taxes/duties – at the moment Hong Kong is the one country which will not cost you additional taxes when importing gear from overseas. Some nations similar to Australia have a threshold so any worth underneath $one thousand is not going to incur import tax/duty.
As to the question of why American listed costs are typically much lower than their retail counterparts in the UK, Australia, NZ, etc. This query has many solutions:
For the final 30-40 years the American Musical Instrument industry and their retailers have been battling it out, attempting to beat one another on price – as the years have passed by, these value pressures have compelled costs down very low while this competitive market is still in its infancy in different countries. A standard explanation given by retailers in different international locations as to why their prices are a lot higher comes down to their insistence on client warranties – they might argue that their Fender John Mayer guitar prices $500 more because they offer native warranty and repair if required. This is totally true and in many cases you may be higher of shopping for a guitar,microphone or piece of DJ gear for that little bit more knowing you may be covered should you face any problems. The complication arises for high ticket items, corresponding to John Mayer Signature Fender Guitar – where the financial savings can get into the 1000’s and the selling point of local warranty turns into less attractive. Some of the largest Music Stores in America such as Guitar Center and Musician’s Good friend retail most of their objects on-line which reduces working costs while many bricks and mortar stores throughout the world must pay a large proportion of their revenue towards hire, tax, workers etc.
In conclusion, I might say for objects valued beneath $1500 you would be higher off shopping for locally, assuming the price is right. In case your next guitar goes to value more than this, it might well pay to phone an American retailer and haggle with price and pay shut attention to the unit’s voltage (110VOLT or Violin 240VOLT) and request they declare the worth low so you won’t get stung by customs on tax and/or GST. Australia, for instance, is not going to charge you any import tax/duty for objects DECLARED at underneath $one thousand Australian dollars. For this reason it perhaps useful to ask the USA shipper to declare your shipment at a low value. Nonetheless, if the unit sustains damage in transit – you may only be covered under this declared value.