5 ms·
I live in a third world country. What's funny is we have a lot of PlayStations and powerful video cards and top-level processors available. We just don't have a
by 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
I live in a third world country. What's funny is we have a lot of PlayStations and powerful video cards and top-level processors available. We just don't have any money to buy them. Maybe I should set up a mail-order business to serve Western hardware enthusiasts.
- rbanffy 5y agoThat’s a clever business idea. Governments will usually demand you register a company in order to be able to legally export them.
- AussieWog93 5y ago>Governments will usually demand you register a company in order to be able to legally export them. Nah. As long as you don't sell many, you can get away with just marking as gift and putting a value of 20 USD on the package.
- AshamedCaptain 5y agoAaaaand this is why now even "$20 gifts" have to pay import taxes at the EU entry customs.
- gbraad 5y ago... and when it gets lost you are unable to claim the insurance amount
- AussieWog93 5y agoHonestly, I wouldn't be concerned about that. Insurance is nothing more than free revenue for the carrier. I'd send close to 500 packages a month to destinations all over the world, and tracked items almost never go missing. For those that do go missing, it's always to a few hotspots that I would simply avoid if selling an item this valuable (pretty much just Brazil and South Africa now; Russia and Italy are much better than they used to be).
- gbraad 5y agoSend to China (Beijing)? Many of my packages have gone lost or got opened and stuff taken out. And yes, the value on the CN23 form is conclusive for the insurance amount you can claim on the CN24 form.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoRequire signing for packages and its a solved issue.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoI'm sure customs officers around the world have never seen this trick before...
- AussieWog93 5y agoOh, I'm sure they see it every single day, but nobody cares. They're actually less likely to hassle you if you write a low value on the package - can literally shave a week+ off of delivery times.
- gambiting 5y agoJust fyi, doing so is actually tax fraud and very much illegal. Yes the chances of getting caught are incredibly small, but if you're doing this commercially then if caught not only you will have to pay ALL of the fees back + penalty, do it for long enough and there will be criminal charges involved. So yes , "nobody cares" as long as you don't get caught.
- CraneWorm 5y agoWell... in my case low value on my package added a week to my delivery precisely because after seeing this trick once too many the customs are now checking everything. I had to mail the sender (big US based company) to send me the correct invoice after the customs sent me the one they received.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoI think you generalize too much... do you know how every customs office work?
- codetrotter 5y agoHow much does an RTX 3080 Ti 12GB cost in your country?
- Xplune13 5y agoNot the OP, but in India, the lowest priced one I could find was from ASUS, which costs around $2600. I don't think the vanilla RTX 3080Ti is available here yet. The most expensive one was from MSI which costs around $3200. Whereas PS5 (official price i.e. without considering the shortages) costs $675.
- agret 5y agoWhat currency is that in?
- no1lives4ever 5y agoI suppose OP is specifying USD. Currency in India would be INR for India.
- Xplune13 5y agoI converted the Indian Rupee to USD while writing that comment. So the prices mentioned in my comment are in USD.
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y agoApologies for the late response. I was joking actually, we really do have a major surplus of hardware, but the prices we pay are insane, and have always been so. I built my PC back in 2015 and paid about two times more what I would have paid if I lived in the US. I ordered a lot of stuff from the US throughout the years. It takes at least a month to get here, and shipping costs from $50 (for the smallest items like Kindles), to $150-200. So it's not really practical. Looking at retail: — the cheapest 3080 Ti 12GB I see is around $2500, the most expensive one is $3200 (there are 10 models in total). — PS5: from $1000 to $1350 — 3080: from $2000 and up. If you have the right connections you can get them individually with bulk prices, but it's not easy to do because of pervasive corruption.
- andrewksl 5y agoHow much does a PS5 or 3080 go for in your neck of the globe?
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y agoOops, sorry. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29148838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29148838
- AussieWog93 5y agoYou missed the boat on the PS5, unfortunately. They're selling for A$750 on the secondary market now - same as what they cost in regular stores. (Unless Australia also has an oversupply...)
- mercer 5y agoWhile I can't judge how good your plan is, FWIW I've often regretted saying 'maybe' when later I realized it would've worked, or at least been worth trying. But then it was no longer a good idea...
- elzbardico 5y agoThird world countries usually have very heavy import and sales taxes as the corrupt elites prefer to tax consumption than income, wealth or inheritance. In Brazil, for example, all tech costs for the consumer in dollars at least twice what it costs for the American consumer due to 60% import tax plus some variable 18 to 30% sales tax (similar but not the same as a VAT). Factor in freight and the fact those items are in practice luxury goods with the importer expecting high margins and the scenario is complete for absurd price increases
- secondaryacct 5y agoWhat do you mean ? Here in Hong Kong (hardly the west), an RTX 3080 is around 1000 USD, how much is it where you are ?
- TMWNN 5y agoNew RTX 3080 sell on US eBay for US$1500-1600. RTX 3080 Ti for $2000. <https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index https://www.tomshardware.com/news/gpu-pricing-index>
- xvector 5y agoWell, I'd be a customer.