Ledacholic Anonymous said:
Great links there, thank you very much.
lighthound.com is cheapest (about 9% discount from retail price) but out of stock for most surefire torches. I am interested in the U2
opticshq.com has 5% discount. I have recently bought stuff from fenix-store. They are wonderful and highly recommended.
OpticsHQ is cheaper than lighthound when you want to buy a U2.
check this:
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/posts/1133154&postcount=11
to see how it works....
You can get the U2 for $210.85 (ex shipping)
Virgo said:
Overseas dealers have to build shipping and customs fees into their pricing
Sure, but take a look at the price differences. There is one local Surefire reseller in the city I live in. They sell the E2e for 200 euro. Last time I checked, Paypal used 1 euro = 1.24 US $. So my local dealer sells the E2e for $248. Now the Surefire MSRP for the E2e is $96, which already includes resellers margins etc. So, that leaves us with $152 to cover customs fees & shipping. Lets say a reseller here has every single light shipped to him separately, and every light gets hit with customs fees.
Ok every light is being shipped separately. From Fountain Valley in california to Leiden in the netherlands, lets take the expensive approach and have it shipped by UPS worldwide express. I just did the calculation on UPS.com, It'll cost $58.79. The package gets hit with customs fees. Which in the netherlands will be 15 euro ($18.60) admin fee and 19% tax ($18.24) so the customs process will cost $36.84 Bringing the grand total of getting the light from US to netherlands to $95.63. So we now are left with $56.37 that the end user has to pay... Where does this money go? Straight into the pocket of the reseller. In the US people like that would be called rip-merchants, but here they are commonly known as local retailers.
Now please keep in mind that Shipping can be done for less than $10 using USPS, and that only about 25% of all packages coming into the country is getting hit with fees and taxes. And not to mention that the reseller will pay less than $96 for each E2e
Ofcourse, no reseller would think about ordering every single light separately. If he buys 100, customs admin fee will still be only $18.60. He will probably get a nice volume discount and save a bundle of cash on shipping as having them all shipped in 1 crate will seriously reduce the shippingcost per light.
In other words, for every Surefire E2e I buy local, I can buy 2 E2e's, 2 spare bulbs and a box of 12 SF123 cells overseas and still have money left...