Will it work

[Phil Chitty]

I'm looking at buying a plotter soon and have been surfing around to get the best price.
Prices in the USA are substancially lower than over here in the UK.
Anyone ever bought electrinic kit from the States?
I'm a bit worried that it won't work in the UK.

[marknj]

Will work fine but no warranty or foc help from uk dealers. Also you may get charged Import Duty, arround 3 to 5%.Regards Mark

[Phil Chitty]

Cheers Marknj

The price I'm looking at for these units might make it worth the risk.

I had a Simrad unit a few years ago that thought it was in Denmark all the time. As much as I'm sure Denmark is a fine country I was in Littlehampton at the time!

[Richard B]

Phil, I would check with the UK distributor if they will cover warranty work on what they may consider to be a "grey import". Otherwise, be prepared to post the unit back to it's point of sale if repairs are ever needed.

Garmin UK are legendary for their customer service, I have heard that they treat customers with old GPS very well indeed, showing a complete disregard to expired warranty periods. I don't know if they extend this courtesy to customers who purchased outside the UK.

You may or may not be concerned about the basemap installed on the chart plotter. We have the luxury of retaining a basic outline of the coast when we "fall off" the edge of our Solent chart, just a couple of miles short of Brighton Marina!

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by marknj

Will work fine but no warranty or foc help from uk dealers. Also you may get charged Import Duty, arround 3 to 5%.Regards Mark

AND VAT at 17.5%!!!

Seriously though - be carefull - they really have clamped down a lot lately on this sort of thing - chances are YOU will have to pay. I have also noticed freight costs have gone up lots as well.

Try places like Cactus and haggle like hell - couldn't find my Raymarine stuff cheaper ANYWHERE and there is nobody who tries harder for a bargain - the USA was NO cheaper!!!

Same with my Digi Camera - just bought a Pentax Optio WP - paid £175 in UK - cheapest I could find in the USA was $255 = £138 + VAT and import duty = £166 - £10 cheaper NOT counting postage which will be a hell of a lot more than that!!!

Just bought an inverter - 2000W model - cheapest i could find were sellers on ebay from Hong Kong etc - trouble is they now charge £50 shipping!!!

[bogib]

Warranty between nations and continents are really upto each company to handle and with regard to the company I work for we give warranty to other agencies who register their engines with us but one thing I am not satisfied with is if individual person gets their engine with boat they import themselves we will not honour any warranty.

With other company I am related to we give full warranty pending on its origin as long as proof of purchase (date of purchase) is within set warranty, as we would then be able to get that back from the manufacturer.

Including there is Dometic´s sinus inverters we supply to ambulances, police and fire trucks

Bogi