[bilingual]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2021214304 Is it a worthy idea? I checked out the UK sites and the mark up seems to be in the $600-700 range from the US prices. I have dealt with Western European buyers of consumer electronics and noticed that they are willing to pay MSRP prices in the US gladly since their prices are so much higher in their countries. For example, I sold several Digital Elph S100 cameras to the UK, Netherlands, and Germany and one guy from the UK told me that the same camera would cost him almost twice the amount he paid me.

I am a big Mac fan and have big respect forthe Mac community. I am just soliciting feedback from the European mac users as to viability of such transactions.

Sincerely,

bilingual

Anyway, this is what I wrote there:
Brand new, never opened Powerbook G4 will be shipped to you as soon as they are shipped in the US (it should be available by the time the auction ends). The specs are on the Apple site: http://www.apple.com/powerbook. Will ship to the countries of the Western Europe only. Payment can be made via Billpoint, c2it, or Western Union. Shipping and insurance is flat $80.00 Fedex/UPS/DHL/USPS . All taxes are responsibility of the buyer. Upon request I can designate the shipment as a gift. Due to the nature of the auction and high possibility of fraud I reserve the right to cancel any and all bids from bidders with negative or zero feedback. The price was calculated based on the Apple Store pricing +10% for my trouble. This is a new idea and I want to give it a trial.

[Clive]

I think you're wasting your time.

A new PB667 is USD:2,499 at the Apple store, in the UK Store it's price is marked as GBP:2,149 (a whopping USD:3137.41).

But the UK price is inclusive of VAT (sales tax), the price without VAT is GBP:1,829 (USD:2,670) so there is really only a difference of GBP:125.00 (USD:180.00). And you want 10%, which makes your price USD:2,750 - more than the UK price.

You may thing "yes, but they can save on the sales tax" - wrong, on import the VAT either needs to be prepaid or will be collected on delivery. The idea of marking it as a "gift" for import doesn't work, I've had people tell me that they've been charged taxes in various countries where items genuinely were gifts.

[bilingual]

Well, I thought I'd try. Like I said, I had some items shipped to the UK and the recipients were not charged any tax. And all it cost me was $3.00 to post the auction on ebay. Thank you for your info, though. I was trying to get the info on the Royal Mail sites but was unsuccessful.