Importing a monitor, worth it, 24" lcd
I really want to grab a new 24" screen for the higher resolution, currently got a 20" screen which is decent but i still want to go larger.
thing is, uk prices, and pretty much EU aswell seem to be an entire rip off.
for instance, Dell uk 2407 is £540ish i think today down from a suppoed £669, i know you can get them on ebay for around £425ish with 3 year warranty and often dead pixel checked and rev a04 aswell. but on the US dell site they are down at around £330 ish after conversion AND including 17.5% vat. so the difference of £200 on the dell sites is supposedly down to differing import duties and vat getting screens into UK as opposed to the US. £200 extra on a screen that is £330 over there is NOT down to import costs.
there seems to be suggestions that samsung and other companies sell the same panels with uk/us part numbers for radically different prices. the new samsung 24" TN panel is £380ish at ocuk, and around £320 after conversion and vat on newegg. the samsung 244T is around £400 in the states and around £700-800 here. the US already have a NEC 24" panel which is £400, our 20" NEC screen is what, £300-350 with the upcoming 24" screen predicted at around £600.
none of the prices are simply down to import duties. why are we getting ripped off so badly, how are samsung and other people getting away with it? another example was sony had some bluray player on their OWN online store in the states for $1000 and in the uk for £950 or so.
anyway, can you import screens easily, power wise do most models have internal psu's that can use either 240/120v? i've heard a few people have imported screens saving a lot of cash but i don't know if they had to buy power adaptors or anything.
if you can import certain models that will work on any uk power, are their any good stores for buying from the US. i know of a few but haven't seen great prices or good shipping costs for them, i know a bunch that do watercooling supplies but not monitors.
or any incredibly good deals in the UK?
PS, i'm not just an average "uk is a ripoff" shouting twit either, cpu's and memory have a fairly good price parity with the US and have done for a while, graphics cards on and off are fairly comparable to us prices as are LOTS of other things. but monitors seem to be a different case altogether, check newegg, directron.com, the prices compared to the same models here are often 70-90% more expensive in the UK and thats beyond import duties which tend to range from 5-20% for various different things, there are some extremes, and some particular products the UK sometimes does have massive import duties. i wouldn't be so peeved off if for instance import duties on lcd's were 20% here and 10% in the states, but that should account for a 10% increase in end cost, its an utter joke that many screens are double the price here.
