 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Thomas
Date: 2001-10-24 21:14
I got the name of a music store in Amsterdam off e-bay. Because the dollar is so strong, the clarinet I am planning to purchase would be $500 less, before customs, then anywhere else. Has anyone done this before? Do you all think this is safe? The company has had numerous positive feedbacks on e-bay. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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Author: Eoin
Date: 2001-10-24 22:53
If you buy in Holland for export to outside the European Union, you do not have to pay the VAT tax on the clarinet. Make sure that the price they quote you excludes VAT. But you should pay import duty when you import it into the United States.
The danger in buying a clarinet long distance is that if there are any problems with it which require adjustment, you have to send it all the way back to Holland. But at that price, you can pay your local tech to sort out teething problems in the clarinet and still have money to spare.
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Author: Bill
Date: 2001-10-24 23:06
There was a thread on this a couple of months ago. An issue was validity of the warranty.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2001-10-25 04:14
Thomas, that does sound pretty good. With that kind of saving, perhaps you should consider going there to select the instrument. Then you will also likely pay the lowest import duty. As a returning traveler, any value you bring into the US over your personal allowance is taxed at a flat ten percent
John
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Author: Wes
Date: 2001-10-25 07:40
Yes, I recently bought a new Hammig wooden piccolo from Matthew's music in Holland by mail, a crazy thing to do if you ask anyone. It cost about $1900, while in many places they sell for $2600. As piccolos are so peculiar, no one would buy without trying. Matt was so easy to deal with and so nice. His father, a flutist, checked it out before it was shipped and it is a wonderful instrument with a beautiful sound and tuning. Hammig in Germany has been making flutes and piccolos for 200 years. I couldn't be more pleased. There was no VAT and no duty.
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Author: Sylvain
Date: 2001-10-25 15:01
Be careful with the pitch.
Most clarinets sold in Europe are tuned to A=442Hz not 440.
-S
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Author: Ralph Katz
Date: 2001-10-25 16:33
I did just the same thing in 1968 and Buffet clarinet would not honor the warrantee. They said if they had known I would be taking the instrument into the U.S. they would not have sold it to me. So I paid someone to pin the crack and the instrument was still a bargain. Their policies may have changed, but on the other hand they may not have. Call the manufacturer first.
Also, caveat emptor, the product lines in Europe were not the same as those sold in the US. Still, when R-13's were $325 in the U.S., a Buffet A Clarinet for $147 was a good deal. (That price was for the instrument in a paper tube, without a case or mouthpiece.)
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Author: Peter
Date: 2001-10-27 16:27
Buying anything overseas to get a better price or importing in quantities is called "grey marketeering" and frowned upon by all manufacturers.
It doesn't make any difference to me, but if you do it, it might, to you. Especially since so many new instruments today are splitting after purchase.
A purchaser pays for a warranty according to the costs of labor and doing business in a particular country. Contrary to popular opinion, the warranty is not "free" from the manufacturer. You pay for it.
Of course, also, in Europe, the manufacturers would have a more difficult time skinning people like they do in the U.S., where Americans are notorious for "throwing away" money. And before anyone disputes that, let me add that the only country in the world where almost everything is discarded and replaced with new, is the U.S., nobody else does that.
Some even regularly save items like tin cans and wash out plastic bag type product packaging for reuse as "baggies," etc.
Why? Because of the costs involved in repairing anything in the U.S., and the fact that repaired things don't always work as well afterwards due to the growing lack of good or even mediocre craftsmen in the country (with some notable exceptions.)
So when you buy at ridiculously low prices from an overseas distributor, and are issued with an overseas warranty, you almost assuredly won't be covered in the U.S.
In fact, there are stories floating around as to someone (I won't mention the name) having bought something overseas, sent it back for exchange under the warranty and the seller refused to deal with it. He called the manufacturer and they told him they had nothing to do with it, that at that point in time it was between him and the seller!!!
And Ralph Katz, with all due respect to you, $325 was a bit of money in 1968, as per the average wage back then, but not so much as to make it prohibitive to pay for a good instrument.
Comparatively speaking the prices are more difficult for the middle class to meet in today's economy.
But if I bought a new clarinet for good money and it split while under warrarty, I wouldn't think that having to have it it pinned at my own expense was a good bargain. I'd want it replaced by the manufacturer, who wouldn't do it because of the grey market factor.
Comparatively speaking, you wound up with a pinned piece of junk, with little, or no after-market value, as compared to a new, replacement instrument from the manufacturer.
I can't imagine anyone screwing themselves that way!
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-10-27 16:47
Peter wrote:
> And before
> anyone disputes that, let me add that the only country in the
> world where almost everything is discarded and replaced with
> new, is the U.S., nobody else does that.
Let me dispute that because you're wrong, at least in my experience. The kind of statement made boldly would, of course, need figures & facts to back it up - which I'll wager you don't have.
I guess you've never lived in Japan. I have. On average they roll through things (or at least did from 1973-1978, the years I lived there) far faster than any other place I have ever lived. Ask about the Japanese "beauty inspections" for cars. If your car has rust spots or minot body damage, you have to either get it fixed or buy a new car. And guess what - it is (or was) almost impossible to buy a used car in Japan. They're shipped to other countries for resale.
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Author: Peter
Date: 2001-10-27 19:28
Mark,
I'll give you Japan, and there, that probably comes from American influence to begin with, and heightened by the Japanese character and attitude towards all things. And, while it applies to many things (some quite expensive, as cars,) it does not apply to as varied an assortment as in the U.S., especially within the "inner" family circles.
But your experience is very narrow, to say the least.
I've lived in Canada, Singapore, Viet Nam, China, Thailand, Korea, Africa, El Salvador, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Spain, France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and Germany (I even got to see the Berlin Wall come down) .
I've also visited widely in several more countries, some not so poor, including Japan.
In India, in the early 1980's, a very wealthy family (and I mean very wealthy by American standards) might have owned a 1954 Pontiac!!! Not even a '57 Chevy or TBird.
And come to think of it, Japan may not be such a good example, unless you lived inside the mainstream Japanese population and within their culture, which I doubt, knowing how the Japanese feel about the "gaijin" and how, even when one marries a Japanese they are generally kept apart from the inner family circles.
One of my daughters married a Singapore Chinese whose family, among their smaller businesses, owned major shipyards and were multi-millionaires a few times over.
Everything people saw of the family, from the outside, was extremely expensive and disdained as trash. But only because publicly, especially among their peers, it would have been a dire "loss of face" to be any different.
"Inside" the family, the penny-pinching was so extreme that it reminded me of a U.S. family somewhere between lower middle class and upper poor class. The very little I was allowed to see of it was even accidental, and when I did see it, the family would immediately shut me out, excuse themselves and go somewhere else to continue their discussions on whatever subject.
Trust me, unless you have had this wide and varied experience, you would have a hard time imagining the veracity of what I am saying to you when I make that statement.
By the way, even though you can buy used cars there, there are New England states that also have this thing about rust on cars, and so does Canada.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-10-27 21:41
> Trust me, unless you have had this wide and varied experience,
> you would have a hard time imagining the veracity of what I am
> saying to you when I make that statement.
Trust me. I don't relate all the places I've lived or visited; neither do i feel I have to.
I also automatically distrust anyone with absolutist ideas.
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