Coronado delay

I think the wait time depends on where you go.

Two weeks ago, I decided to get a PST and started looking at websites. I
found one in stock at the B&H Photo & Video website, put in an order and two
days later I had my PST. No pre-order or anything of the sort.

-Astrosetz
www.astrosetz.com
www.ncsf.info

Martin Frey wrote:
rander3127 wrote:


Why do the Brits still put up with this economic rape? What
happens if you order one in from a U.S. or Canadian dealer?


We do - but tend to get hit with no guarantee or support, shipping
charges, import and value added taxes. I just bought the upgrade to
Starry Night Pro - shipping and taxes more than doubled the total US
cost.

Personal import used to be a good route - but it's now so difficult
to get through the patriot act that staying at home and paying double
at least preserves one's sanity.


Yes, and it's not limited to certain products, nor to the UK. The whole
of the EU follows the same guidelines which dictate that you pay duty
(which varies depending on the type of goods) and VAT on top of that.
What really takes the biscuit is that you're even charged tax on the
shipping charges! The only thing working in our favour is the relative
strength of the Euro, and maybe other Eurpean currencies.

However, depending on the US/Canadian price of the goods you're after,
it *can* pay off to order abroad. For example, I recently tried tried to
figure out the bottom line on some eyepieces and a new diagonal and it
turned out I could save maybe EUR 100-150 by ordering from the US.
Whether it's worth the extra hassle and effort, I don't know.

The matter of buying locally is made worse by the restricted number of
"official" importers, all of which of course take their cut too. Given
the costs involved in importing and shipping in bulk, I can't help
thinking that this is a significant portion of the retail price but,
without any competition to keep them in check, I don't see much changing
here any time soon.

--
Steve Maddison
Den Haag, The Netherlands
http://www.cosam.org/

On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 22:56:08 +0100, Martin Frey
wrote:

rander3127 wrote:

Why do the Brits still put up with this economic rape? What happens
if you order one in from a U.S. or Canadian dealer?

We do - but tend to get hit with no guarantee or support, shipping
charges, import and value added taxes. I just bought the upgrade to
Starry Night Pro - shipping and taxes more than doubled the total US
cost.

Personal import used to be a good route - but it's now so difficult to
get through the patriot act that staying at home and paying double at
least preserves one's sanity.

If by that you mean they open boxes more often, they do, but so what?
What your countries are doing is maintaining trade barriers and
artificially protecting home-based retail sellers. But it's all B.S.
and here is why; A long time ago in the U.S., the only seller of
Celestron was Celestron. If you bought a scope from them you
paid as an example, $1000 for a C8. Then, the independent dealers
came on scene and all of a sudden, you could buy a C8 for $695.
Being in Canada, Toronto to be exact, there was one dealer for those
scopes and he charged $1500/ea.
Now, if you ordered one in Canada from an independent dealer,
you could land it for only around $1000 which was accounted
for by the 13% Federal sales tax and the 11% duty.
Now, you'd think that the duty and sales tax was in place to protect
the unhealthy margins of the indiginous sellers, but even those taxes
and duties you could bring it in FAR cheaper than paying what the
ravenous local retailer wanted.
After a while, other retailers sprang up and prices started to
rationalize, one, because of competition amongst the retailers and
two, the realization amongst the retailers that many people were
simply bypassing them and buying the scopes out of the U.S. directly.
So, all that was left was the Fed tax, dollar exchange and duty.
The duty in Canada was dropped once free trade took over
but by then, the prices here were at least as good as ordering
in the scopes from the U.S.
There is NO reason to put up with greedy local retailers or grasping
anti-free trade governments.
The one thing you can't get around is the warranty, and it could cost
you a fair bit in shipping if something were to go wrong, but most
U.S. retailers will give assurance of product functionality, at least
the ones I've dealt with in the past.
Lastly, ignore the prohibitions put on sellers by the likes of Meade
and Celestron so a retailer in the U.S. is prevented from shipping
to other countries, most will ship under certain circumstances.
Those private prohibitions are probably not even legal.

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 01:06:03 +0200, Steve Maddison
wrote:

Martin Frey wrote:
rander3127 wrote:


Why do the Brits still put up with this economic rape? What
happens if you order one in from a U.S. or Canadian dealer?


We do - but tend to get hit with no guarantee or support, shipping
charges, import and value added taxes. I just bought the upgrade to
Starry Night Pro - shipping and taxes more than doubled the total US
cost.

Personal import used to be a good route - but it's now so difficult
to get through the patriot act that staying at home and paying double
at least preserves one's sanity.


Yes, and it's not limited to certain products, nor to the UK. The whole
of the EU follows the same guidelines which dictate that you pay duty
(which varies depending on the type of goods) and VAT on top of that.
What really takes the biscuit is that you're even charged tax on the
shipping charges! The only thing working in our favour is the relative
strength of the Euro, and maybe other Eurpean currencies.

However, depending on the US/Canadian price of the goods you're after,
it *can* pay off to order abroad. For example, I recently tried tried to
figure out the bottom line on some eyepieces and a new diagonal and it
turned out I could save maybe EUR 100-150 by ordering from the US.
Whether it's worth the extra hassle and effort, I don't know.


If someone wanted to do some serious business, they set themselves up
as a local exporter out of the U.S. for these products. For a fee,
maybe 10% they could do the purchasing locally and then ship it to
whatever customer in Europe or whereever paid them. Screw the
Meade-Celestron agreements with their dealers.
If prices in Canada from the local retailers hadn't come down to U.S.
levels, I would still buy out of the U.S., even if it meant having a
U.S. intermediate destination to receive the goods and meet the silly
Meade Celestron rules about only shipping inside countries.

"Astrosetz" wrote in message ...
I think the wait time depends on where you go.

Two weeks ago, I decided to get a PST and started looking at websites. I
found one in stock at the B&H Photo & Video website, put in an order and two
days later I had my PST. No pre-order or anything of the sort.

Likewise. I expressed curiousity about the PST in the sct-user Yahoo group and
someone mentioned that B&H Photo had them in stock; I ordered via the web the
next day (Monday) and had a PST in hand 2 days later (Wednesday).

It would appear the not-well-known (for astronomy) shops have inventory on hand
whereas the "biggies" (OPT, Anacortes, Orion, etc.) have tremendous backlogs.

One aspect of the order was interesting: apparently Coronado will only permit
the PST to be shipped via 1-/2-day air carriers claiming that shipping trauma
by ground carriers will void the warranty -- what, the etalon is that fragile
and people's eyes will boil and *P*O*P* out? :-)

FWIW, the PST I received was shipped from Coronado to B&H Photo on Sept. 21,
I ordered on the 27th, and received it on the 29th (of September); this implies
B&H had inventory on hand for at least 4 days, and they still had stock on the
29th (per their website).

Their website is http://www.bhphotovideo.com/

rander3127 wrote in
:

If someone wanted to do some serious business, they set themselves up
as a local exporter out of the U.S. for these products. For a fee,
maybe 10% they could do the purchasing locally and then ship it to
whatever customer in Europe or whereever paid them. Screw the
Meade-Celestron agreements with their dealers.

This would only work as long as the purchaser didn't care about any kind of
warranty, since making only a 10% profit, there is no way that the
"someone" could offer warranty coverage.

rander3127 wrote in
:

The one thing you can't get around is the warranty, and it could cost
you a fair bit in shipping if something were to go wrong, but most
U.S. retailers will give assurance of product functionality, at least
the ones I've dealt with in the past.

The manufacturer is under no obligation to honor the warranty for any so-
called "grey market" (i.e., outside their authorized distribution channels)
purchases.

Lastly, ignore the prohibitions put on sellers by the likes of Meade
and Celestron so a retailer in the U.S. is prevented from shipping
to other countries, most will ship under certain circumstances.
Those private prohibitions are probably not even legal.

Not even legal "where?"

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 06:26:55 GMT, Paul Lawler
wrote:

rander3127 wrote in
:

If someone wanted to do some serious business, they set themselves up
as a local exporter out of the U.S. for these products. For a fee,
maybe 10% they could do the purchasing locally and then ship it to
whatever customer in Europe or whereever paid them. Screw the
Meade-Celestron agreements with their dealers.

This would only work as long as the purchaser didn't care about any kind of
warranty, since making only a 10% profit, there is no way that the
"someone" could offer warranty coverage.

The Brits (for eg) are paying
around a 60% premium over the scope cost stateside for a
warranty. Very fair. Like asking the buyer of a $20,000 car to
anti-up another $12,000 to make sure it works.

On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 06:30:30 GMT, Paul Lawler
wrote:

rander3127 wrote in
:

The one thing you can't get around is the warranty, and it could cost
you a fair bit in shipping if something were to go wrong, but most
U.S. retailers will give assurance of product functionality, at least
the ones I've dealt with in the past.

The manufacturer is under no obligation to honor the warranty for any so-
called "grey market" (i.e., outside their authorized distribution channels)
purchases.

Lastly, ignore the prohibitions put on sellers by the likes of Meade
and Celestron so a retailer in the U.S. is prevented from shipping
to other countries, most will ship under certain circumstances.
Those private prohibitions are probably not even legal.

Not even legal "where?"

If there are no official trade barriers in place, what gives companies
the right to tell retailers whom they can sell scopes to?
-Rich

In message , rander3127
writes
On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 01:06:03 +0200, Steve Maddison
wrote:

Martin Frey wrote:
rander3127 wrote:


Why do the Brits still put up with this economic rape? What
happens if you order one in from a U.S. or Canadian dealer?

The reputable dealers officially will not supply outside their allocated
territory on pain of ceasing to be dealers in the brand at all.

We do - but tend to get hit with no guarantee or support, shipping
charges, import and value added taxes. I just bought the upgrade to
Starry Night Pro - shipping and taxes more than doubled the total US
cost.

Personal import used to be a good route - but it's now so difficult
to get through the patriot act that staying at home and paying double
at least preserves one's sanity.


Yes, and it's not limited to certain products, nor to the UK. The whole
of the EU follows the same guidelines which dictate that you pay duty
(which varies depending on the type of goods) and VAT on top of that.

It is actually worse in mainland Europe than in the UK. At least in the
UK books are zero rated so they at least are OK bought from US sources.

Hardware is best brought in personally and in chunks below the
ludicrously low UK personal import limit of £145 (or whatever) pounds.

What really takes the biscuit is that you're even charged tax on the
shipping charges! The only thing working in our favour is the relative
strength of the Euro, and maybe other Eurpean currencies.

However, depending on the US/Canadian price of the goods you're after,
it *can* pay off to order abroad. For example, I recently tried tried to
figure out the bottom line on some eyepieces and a new diagonal and it
turned out I could save maybe EUR 100-150 by ordering from the US.
Whether it's worth the extra hassle and effort, I don't know.

If you are visiting the US in person then probably it is worthwhile.

If someone wanted to do some serious business, they set themselves up
as a local exporter out of the U.S. for these products. For a fee,
maybe 10% they could do the purchasing locally and then ship it to
whatever customer in Europe or whereever paid them. Screw the
Meade-Celestron agreements with their dealers.

And Meade-Celestron will chop the legs off any dealer that exports
outside their designated territory. There are already a handful of grey
dealers that will sell across borders but not much that is attractive
when you consider warrantee and service issues for return to base
service.

If prices in Canada from the local retailers hadn't come down to U.S.
levels, I would still buy out of the U.S., even if it meant having a
U.S. intermediate destination to receive the goods and meet the silly
Meade Celestron rules about only shipping inside countries.

Not just Meade-Celestron just about all branded consumer goods have
these sort of territorial restrictions. Vixen, even Levi's jeans. If you
visit in person there is no problem buying from US dealers, but getting
reputable ones to ship mail order overseas is hard - bordering on
impossible.

And would you want to buy from a shady dealer thousands of miles away?

Regards,
--
Martin Brown