Poor Swiss and flashlights

I just went to a swiss website selling Surefires. WOW, they are paying allot more than they need to.

http://www.outdoors-direct.ch/SUREFIRE29.HTML



remember: 1 Swiss franc = 0.764409 U.S. dollars

Yes, prices in Switzerland are high in general, in some stores they are even outrageous.
For example, a SF G2 can be had for 70 Swiss francs up to 130 Swiss francs. This price range is insane.
I bought a way overpriced SF 8X in Switzerland about 10 years ago. Little did I know...
Local flashlight & battery dealers don't get any business from me nowadays.
Even with insured and tracked express shipping and customes it's cheaper to order from overseas, especially from the USA.

An example:
I just received 5 PT Apex headlamps from the USA for me and friends. They cost US $64.95 each. Express Shipping for the headlamps was $51 (ordered monday, received friday). Upon arrival I payed CHF 75.- for customs duties. Even with these additional expenses I got the headlamps about 20% cheaper than from a local dealer. Sad, isn't it.

Same deal here in Australia, I'm just grateful for the good web-based dealers we have access to in the US that not only price their lights well but also charge reasonable shipping (as opposed to many with outrageous shipping! ).

Andrew

Yes indeed, this is a very sad thing. Let's hope that the free trade agreement with USA will become reality soon.
My general rule of thumb for real conversion rates:
1 US$ = 1 Euro = 0.5 CHF

It works quite well for a lot of high end outdoor stuff (flashlights, ...). The conversion rate for electronics are closer to the real currency rate.

Yes, sadly well known reality... :thumbsdow

6P $115
U2 $460
M3 $420
M6 $670
10X $760

I even remember having seen a website selling G2s for 170CHF or about $130 :tsk:

That said, recently a few dealers have come up with "decent" prices, but it's still cheaper to buy online from our trusted sources

Same deal hear in Australia,
we get hit twice the price with GST on top of that

They have to pay for that "free" healthcare some way!

:wow: That is BIG BUCKS! :duck:. That's outrageous. I feel bad that people are charged THAT much. Sorry guys.

fieldops said:

:wow: That is BIG BUCKS! :duck:. That's outrageous. I feel bad that people are charged THAT much. Sorry guys.

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It's a shame Surefire don't feel that way................

Dave Huck said:

It's a shame Surefire don't feel that way................

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Surefire probably doesn't give it a s***. I think the people who buy surefire flashlight overseas (outside the States) are rather Special operation/military/police (and don't look at the price as it is working tools for them) , or it's people like us who order surefire stuff from a local american dealer (ebay ) and pay about half the total prize. For example, I paid my U2 INCLUDING shipping 222 US$, the prize of a U2 by the official switzerland's Surefire's dealer :toilet: is 460 US$ WITHOUT SHIPPING :ironic:

magic79 said:

They have to pay for that "free" healthcare some way!

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Healthcare in Switzerland is *NOT* free, it's actually *VERY* expensive!

The prices of the Surefire lights from their "official" reseller is 100% the result of the following idea: Let's charge as much as people are willing to pay. Surefire is supporting this shameful method by protecting their resellers by not shipping outside of the USA and putting pressure on US dealers not to do so either. I've contacted Surefire years ago about these ridiculous prices in Switzerland, but they don't want to help. My company tried to become a Surefire reseller for Switzerland several times in the past with the promise of offering the lights at more reasonable prices without success. The only other manufacturer that works as hard as Surefire to protect high prices outside of the USA is Maglite. They put the same kind of pressure on their US dealers not to ship to the rest of the world while protecting their foreign resellers' crazy prices, Maglite 6D is $69 in Switzerland, MagCharger is $262.

In my humble opinion, this kind of business behavior is a shame and the opposite of free trade, a value and idea we Europeans and Americans share, but obviously not all companies do so. It's easy to love Surefire lights, but not quite as easy to love the company...

Mark2 said:

It's easy to love Surefire lights, but not quite as easy to love the company...

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Amen to that!

The company has really suprised me. They have excellent lights but customer service doesnt really matter to them. I dont think they will change that.

-tom

The cheapest place for flashlights that I have found in switzerland is polizeibedarf.ch

God Bless Lighthound - The flashaholics best friend!


CFU

Same story here in the netherlands... I've been in contact with 2 companies here in the netherlands that sell Surefire. 1 is a brick & mortar store in my city. Where they sell Surefire lights at ridiculous prices ($250 for a E2e, $315 for a L4 etc) and the company that imports Surefire to the netherlands, which also has ridiculous pricing ($420 for a U2) and they don't even know their products, they told me 'there is no new or old version bodytube on the U2, they're all the same', they even DENIED it when I told them about the plastic sleeve and smaller inside diameter on the later versions.

Praise the light for US retailers like Lighthound and OpticsHQ for shipping international at reasonable prices (got packages from both of them today )

In Norway you have to pay $550 for an U2 :shakehead ($440 without tax). Anyone higher?

Sigbjoern

Sometimes things go the other way as well. We use a DC/DC converter in a product I manufacture. The Exclusive US dealer charges $55US for the part. I found I can order them from Austrailia for $15US After shipping is all said it brings the price per part to about $18US. Shocking?

What I feel bad about is that according to the site, their 5 watt KL6 heads apparently only put out 65 lumen... Maybe those are metric lumens?