[Elecraft] European prices (once more)

[Geert Jan de Groot]

There's a couple of reasons why some people would prefer to purchase
from an European distributor:
- A surprizing large number of people living in a large non-English
  language group (Germany, Austria, Switzerland to name one),
  feel uncomfortable doing stuff in English
  (trust me - I worked in Germany for 2.5 years).
  There's nothing bad about it - think how well UK television does
  to work on your German/Spanish language skills!
  There's a _need_ for the German manuals here.
- The acceptance/availability of credit cards differs in the world;
  they're everywhere in the USA, reasonably common in the UK,
  but for instance in the Netherlands there's limited acceptance
  and hence not everybody has a credit card.
  I don't even want to *think* about the cost of doing money transfers
  to the USA w/o credit cards; it may cost as much as $50!!!
  So, a local bank account in the same country/bank system is a real
  benefit.

So there's good and bad. In your case, buying direct may be easier.
That's not true for everyone, and having stuff sent to the EU
through the regular postal system is a disaster ever since 
Global Logistics Systems is handling incoming shipments;
packages get delayed (sometimes 6 weeks!), taxed incorrectly, lost, etc
Having someone deal with that is a real benefit (GLS lost
Elecraft update kits to me *twice*).

Keep in mind that the UK and the USA have similar banking systems.
That's not neccessary true elsewhere in Europe. 

Then there's pricing. When looking at the mailing list, I suspect
that the current sales volume worldwide is ~60 K2's/ month
(keep posting those serial numbers!). I suspect that no more than
8 or so go to Europe. You can't make a lot of price cut on
volumes like that (I don't think that the importer has 20
Elecraft units on stock, that's an unwise amount of money, 
so he'll have to order from Elecraft as orders come in).
So I suspect that the distributor gets roughly similar prices
than regular customers, and yet has to deal with all the
ideosyncracies of international shipping, keep spare parts, etc.

And, as said, there's shipping charges (now twice, since the
distributor can't take advantage of bulk shipments to Europe),
and VAT and taxes (over customs price *and* shipping charges).
The distributor certainly won't get a 40% margin, probably
closer to 15%.

In short, the European distributor thing may or may not be
something for you. Many things inside Europe are incredible
expensive compared to getting it externally (have you compared
Icom gear prices recently? Bank charges for transactions in the EU?
Inter-EU postal charges?), partially thanks to the European Union (not).

The EU distributor thing works for some. It may or may not work
for you. YMMV.

Geert Jan