Just out of curiosity, what is the turn around time on parts shipped to Europe?
The bigest issue for us is the shipping cost, shipping time and import tax etc
If I buy parts worth lets say 1000 $ from summit and have them shipped directly to my danish adress the shipping charge could easyli be 300-400-500 $ with flight - I have them within 1 week
when the parts hits the custums I have to pay 10% import tax of the total of the invoice ( 1.300,- ), then I have to pay 25 moms/VAT ( sorry dont know the us name for that ), and then a $ 35 fee for custums handling
So the total pris for parts worth 1000,- in denmark is ( 1000 + 300 = 1300 x 10% = 1.430 X 25% = 1.787,- + 35 = ) 1.822,- which gives us the total in danish DKK approx 1 USD is 11 DKK
Then there is something called ShopUSA - it is a company specilised shipping stuff from US til Denmark. it is free to join, and the you get a US post adress with a suite #. THAT is veru nice because most vendores like summet etc ship free to a US adress, and we can put the us adress in our ebay etc.
they charge us pr M2 space but still it is very les shipping costs - around 50-75 $ pr shipping. the import tax and moms/vat is offcause the same but it amout is much less. when we use this shopusa the rate is usualy 1 usd = 8 DKK
So buttom line I can save DKK 3.000,- ( $500-550 ) on parts worth $ 1000,- when using shopUSA. The catch with using the ShopUSA is the ekstra time - it takes usually 2-3 weeks to get to my house.
we have off cause shops the deal with parts but there prices i much higher, sometimes 1 USD X 16-17 DKK :-(((
Regards
Claus Møller, Denmark