Quote:
Originally Posted by digby dart
The price in the USA is US$3195. Freight and GST added, that comes to AU$4084 all up delivered to the Australian Astronomers door from the USA. Over AU$1000 difference.
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While you won't normally see me on this side of this argument, I get much closer to $4500 AU when I do the math, including .93 exchange rate, $500 or so US shipping for the mount, customs processing fee, and GST on the sum of the above. $800 difference on a piece of hardware like this is fairly reasonable to get domestic warranty service, if you consider the cost of shipping a mount once to the USA and back. It is 15% of the price, which is nowhere near, say, the CGE mark up of 40+% you'll see elsewhere (based on what my CGE cost me last month, new, shipped from overseas.)
There are some responsible importers out there. There are also some dubious ones. Avoid the dubious ones and get on with life.
Eric