Buying Computer Parts Off E-bay - Import Duty?

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi

Well i just managed to get an E-Bay account going inclusive PayPal, and am now interested to know that if i buy stuff from, say, U.S.A. and they ship it here, will i need to pay import duty?

The item in question is a certain CPU type which i can't get in Bangkok for money or smiles (AMD Athlon XP64 3.400+ socket 754!) and it's dead cheap off E-Bay (less than 1.500 Baht incl.shipping). The party selling it is a company, so i can't tell them to wrap in in gift wrap and stamp it "birthday gift" to evade import duties

Appreciate any advice, preferably from someone who has done this before (i've never used E-Bay or any other online-shopping).

Kind regards.....

Thanh

[dave_boo]

I've had stuff sent. If they don't insure it (I don't think that would be necessary on that cheap of a processor, but your fiscal responsiblity may be more developed than mine), they don't even need to put what is contained inside. I had 4x2 GB of RAM sent and I thought the tax was a bit excessive.

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi

Thanks for that I was wondering if they send it "unlabeled", won't customs open the package to find out what's in there? And you mentioned "excessive tax" on the RAM - how much tax did you have to pay? I mean in %, don't tell me in Baht Because if i have to pay taxes and stuff i won't order the thing in first place. It's not that i NEED it...... my computer runs fine with the 2.800+ Sempron

Best regards.....

Thanh

[dave_boo]

Hi

Thanks for that I was wondering if they send it "unlabeled", won't customs open the package to find out what's in there? And you mentioned "excessive tax" on the RAM - how much tax did you have to pay? I mean in %, don't tell me in Baht Because if i have to pay taxes and stuff i won't order the thing in first place. It's not that i NEED it...... my computer runs fine with the 2.800+ Sempron

Best regards.....

Thanh

Hmmm, this was back when the baht to $ was ~ 36ish. The sender only claimed it was 12600 and IIRC, it was some 2k taxes. This was at the post office near the train station....don't know if that helps. Didn't seem to be any sort of rules or regulations, just here's your receipt, let me see your passport, pay the 'tax' and inspect your merchandise. They didn't open it up, but they were curious as to what was inside. I explained it as well as possible through the wife....

[LivinLOS]

I have been caught with 37 % (actually 30 luxury good tax then + 7% sales tax so compounding those) on the item + its shipping costs !!!

Plus I also used to buy lots of stuff online.. A huge % never was delivered.. Postman just pockets anything thats not to be signed for.

[monty]

I was of the impression that anything IT, both hardware and software related was "only" 10% import duty.

So in the case of Dave_boo this would be correct!

12600+10% import=13860

13860+7%VAT=14830 Baht

Total taxes due=2230 Baht!

I have several things sent over, but always registered mail or by courier.

On the registered packages, maybe 3 out of 10 have been checked, and I had to go and pay the duty at the post office, correctly calculated as per the above rates.

On the corier sent packages I had to pay tax each and everytime, same rate as above but with quite a big amount slapped on for giving the courier the privilege of collecting the tax (> 800 Baht/shipment)!

On the other hand, each and every company I ordered from was perfectly wiling to lower the declared value. Most of them actually do this without asking on lower priced items, unless you as the buyer insist on the full price declared for insurance reasons.

Plain registered mail is not insured to start with (or only a small, weight based standard amount), and I've never had a courier package (Fedex, DHL,...) go astray, so I feel quite comfortable letting them put a smallish amount on...

[Gary A]

I bought a GPS off eBay. I paid about $225 US for it. It cost another $49 for the shipping. The UPS guy delivered it within about three days and I had to pay about 990 baht for taxes.

After having the GPS and having the ESRI map installed, I ended up saving almost half of what the unit costs here.

[SiamRealEstate]

I have ordered 2 things from Ebay and had them shipped here and had no problem.

1 was a battery for a laptop and it was impossible to find in Thailand, even though I bought the lap top here. It was also more expensive to change the cell, here or in KL. (2000 baht)

I also bought a charger. The battery nor the charger is the same quality as the original compaq battery and charger but it works fine. Better then none and was only about 1500 baht for the battery and 500 for the charger.

I had no import taxes and it was sent registered mail, BUT I ordered from HONG KONG! This I have found is a great way to get items shipped!

Shipping from Hong Kong to anywhere in the world is inexpensive! Much better then shipping from America. Also UK international shipping charges are much lower then America's.

If you do an advance search for computer items located in Hong Kong you will find many parts. A computer repair technician said that even the service centres cant get laptop batteries as there is a safety issue.

Maybe if it comes from Hong Kong the Thai Post or customs is not as curious.

Since then I have ordered other misc items from ebay from Hong Kong/ China sellers and have had no problems and have been able to track them on line.

Most of it all comes from China anyways..........

Good Luck!~

[sajal]

Ive ordered stuff online in the past... but nothing for the last year or so... these guidelines may be outdated

Its a risk u need to take.. Certain points would help you minimize the risk of being taxed.

1) Price below 1k baht no tax : Get seller to mention price below $20... when we send sample of our products to customers abroad we mention "FOR SAMPLE ONLY HAVING NO COMMERCIAL VALUE" <-- this would work best.

2) Use EMS. Ask the seller to send it thru the national post office and not UPS/DHL/Fedex <-- the customs people would see your package and say "ahh that must be something cheap in there... otherwise theyd have had sent it via a decent courier". Whenever i got sample via an established courier, the customs always took a peak inside,not the case with EMS

3) If seller refuses to follow the above then try n find a friend in US who could proxy for you?

[Thanh-BKK]

Hello again.

Thank you all for the replies, i highly appreciate it. It looks like there is too much hassle involved with getting such item from the States, and i did not find a suitable offer from anywhere in Asia.... so i better forget about it. I am not keen on paying taxes or duties, and as i mentioned i am not actually in the need for that CPU as my computer runs fine. I sure would have liked a little extra "punch" but what gives - overclock mine a little more and get it too

With best regards.....

Thanh

[mokwit]

Computer parts no longer have duty on them, although VAT is applicable. That said, you may still be charged duty TIT.

I have used this Customs declaration with 2 large boxes containing high end graphics cards and not been charged duty or VAT for that matter:

“Heading 8741 Computer Part. VAT only applicable”

If small enough another tip is to ask the sender to put the component in a jiffy bag, not a box as (even non dutiable stuff in) boxes are dutiable but stuff in bags is not according to customs logic.

If you are using a courier specify UPS as they have their own enclosed customs clearance area. You will pay any duty payable,and may be asked to pay duty where none is strictly payable, but it will more likely be the correct duty. I have had very, very, bad experiences with DHL - duty on non dutiable items, absolutely screwed on duty payable, customes insurance and storage fees more than the value of the item etc.

Generally, impotation is a last resort. If there is a supplier in Pantip but he does not have the modely you need ask HIM to order it and thus have him NOT you deal with customs, duty etc HTH

Edited February 9, 2008 by mokwit

[Thanh-BKK]

Hi

Thanks for that reply But i already made up my mind... i won't get the part as there is no real need for it, and the hassle is too large.

As to "Panthip", if i could get it there i would - but the problem is that as soon as a given item is no longer produced (socket 754 CPU's here) they become "unavailable" in Panthip. That can happen extremely quickly - like before, i bought a brand new socket A CPU (Athlon 2600+) and only two months later, when my mainboard died, i was NOT able to find another mainboard with "that outdated socket". So i went for the board with the socket 754 and the matching CPU, and only ONE month later i wanted to upgrade the CPU - and same again "no more CPU for that outdated socket"!

So when i just found that those are available aplenty on E-Bay i became interested....... but the hassle is too much (going to post office, having to pay duties/taxes etc).... if it can't be delivered to my place i just don't buy it, finish.

But i do appreciate all replies i have gotten, thanks a lot to all of you

Best regards.....

Thanh

[dave_boo]

Hi

Thanks for that reply But i already made up my mind... i won't get the part as there is no real need for it, and the hassle is too large.

As to "Panthip", if i could get it there i would - but the problem is that as soon as a given item is no longer produced (socket 754 CPU's here) they become "unavailable" in Panthip. That can happen extremely quickly - like before, i bought a brand new socket A CPU (Athlon 2600+) and only two months later, when my mainboard died, i was NOT able to find another mainboard with "that outdated socket". So i went for the board with the socket 754 and the matching CPU, and only ONE month later i wanted to upgrade the CPU - and same again "no more CPU for that outdated socket"!

So when i just found that those are available aplenty on E-Bay i became interested....... but the hassle is too much (going to post office, having to pay duties/taxes etc).... if it can't be delivered to my place i just don't buy it, finish.

But i do appreciate all replies i have gotten, thanks a lot to all of you

Best regards.....

Thanh

I used to have a 2600+. Great little chip.

However, perhaps you're buying behind the curve too much. If you're planning on staying abreast, it looks like AMD is going to stick with AM2+ for a bit. LGA775 on Intel's side should be around for another year at least(which with probably the exception of Socket7 makes it the longest run of any Intel slots/sockets), when they're going to go with a new motherboard socket to accomodate the memory controller on CPU they're going to be producing.

I understand trying to buy the best bang for the buck, but as you've seen, sometimes doing that can be more expensive, because you have to upgrade your Mobo, CPU, and occasionally RAM by buying middle of the road items instead of next-gen stuff.

[Thanh-BKK]

Thanks

I would go for an AM2, the last few machines i've built had that socket and different CPU's for it (Sempron, Athlon, Athlon dual-core) and i would not mind changing the board, RAM and CPU together again.... but i want to avoid having to install both OS again! As i run Vista and XP in a dual-boot setup (i have them set up so they are identical, i.e. the exact same applications under each OS so if i do run comparing tests i want them to be equal in any aspect) and since by "applications" i mean TONS of them, after a change of mainboards i would have to spend a week flat to get the software side up again. And i don't have the time or patience to do that, as long as i am not forced to do it, i.e. as long as my computer runs. And it runs just excellent.

A great thing about this particular Sempron is that you can overclock it almost limitless..... it's stock core speed is 1,600 MHz and i already had it up to 2.400! My BIOS actually can ramp it up to 2,800 but it won't boot then. At 2,400 it's stable but gets very hot.... i don't like that. So in day-to-day operation i run it at 2,000 and it's rock stable and cool (i use an "Arctic Freezer 64" cooler which makes a lot of difference when overclocked!). I really can't complain about it's performance, coupled with 2 GB of RAM.

I would have liked the larger L2 cache of the Athlon tough (more that than the additional speed since i can "emulate" the speed easily should i wish) because i do a lot of video converting which is a somewhat CPU-intensive task.

You see, when i built my machine it was a low-budget job because unplanned - a case of "shutting my perfectly working computer down in the evening and the next morning it wouldn't boot", turned out that the motherboard had somehow died while the system was powered down..... and as mentioned, i couldn't get a motherboard for that CPU (then 2 months old!) anymore, so i got a second-hand one first which required different (DDR-1) RAM than what i had (SD)... so i bought that RAM too. Came home, built the system, found the motherboard was buggy, returned it next day - and forgot to bring the RAM, not expecting DDR-1 to be outdated already! So i had to find a NEW motherboard that would take DDR-1 as i had not enough $$ for yet another set of new RAM.... ended up with this socket 754 board and the (cheap!) Sempron instead of an Athlon. And as it went - one month and paycheck later i went for a faster CPU and was told that my socket is outdated and no more CPU's are available (then i wonder where all the CPU's went that were on sale the month before, Athlons and Semprons). And that day i did swear to myself that i will keep using my computer until the day it falls apart because upgrading is next to impossible and building a new one every year is pointless.

Best regards.....

Thanh