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we still have bottles of bleach labelled "DO NOT DRINK". Let's take that off for a year or two and then start selling Tamiya products with original labels. Should be fineComment
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Have you tried to buy anything from the USA Jens? I asked for a quote for a set of decals which would fit into a standard envelope. They wanted over £20 for postage to the UK! That's nearly ten times what it would cost for me to send the same item to the USA from the UK.Comment
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Biying from the usa os a big no no just cost far to mich postage makes it pointlessComment
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Sadly no Pete as there is no stock in the U.K. Temporarily unavailable everywhere I've looked. Although it can be imported at a high expense if your prepared to wait a while. And although I'd like some I'm not paying extortionate prices and import fees. So I go without for now until.Comment
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Ah, sorry. I checked a few of the sites yesterday and they claimed to have UK stock, but not today it seems.
PeteComment
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Yes. I used to buy a lot of stuff from the states before they added their stupid export tax... Before this the cheap dollar still made it a lot cheaper, but today no.
Also the Swedish customs opens 100% of all packages from the states and slap you with a "handling fee" of £25 + whatever tax the can squeeze out of you that made the thing cheaper in the first place.
I no longer order anything from the states - not even if it was free because of our customs...
Luckily they aren't treating packages from Asia the same way yet so I'm still happily ordering all sorts of things I can't get locally, or things that have been marked up too much by greedy retailers.
There are talks of shipping is going to start to cost a bit more from China but we'll see. Today you can get things delivered from mainland China for peanuts, as long as you're prepared to wait a couple of weeks.
Within Europe there's still a lot to order but postage can be a bit steep. I remember when I used to live in England and I noticed that it was cheaper to send a package from UK to Sweden than it was to send your neighbour (in Sweden) a simple letter!
Never order from Italy. At least 30% of the mail goes missing there - and that's according to themselves...
When I order from abroad I try to only order from reputable stores/retailers. Have worked great so far because they have to stay in business and it'll cost them too much to shaft anybody. I always send a thank you letter after the goods have arrived if it was speedy and well packaged and the next order you know they'll take care of you!
Sadly it will become harder, and more expensive, in the future to buy things abroad. Customs, tax, security and whatever bullcrap reasons they can come up with will be the reason for this...Comment
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The one thing that dose surprise me is that asia is largely ignored by customs from many countries around the world but youd think that they would crack down on asian imporrs as many of us do import things we shouldent do into our countries lots of counterfits come from there could be dangerous we simply dont no sometimesComment
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It's rather foolish to say that Asian countries are ignored by customs in any country. Every country has its own set of tariffs, according to their own economic & political reasons.
The reason a country like China has such a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world is that we in the West have given them preferential trade agreements. By allowing Chinese products to come into our countries cheaply, we have hoped the Chinese would reciprocate & allow us access to their vast domestic market.
That this hasn't actually happened is a political matter.
As for the rest, it all comes down to the basic laws of supply & demand. Over the past years, Tamiya have faced huge competition from new rival manufacturers; Vallejo, Revell, Lifecolor, Mr Hobby to name but a few. Add that to increasing shipping costs & the supply goes down, along with the demand and prices inevitably go up.
The rise of nontoxic acrylic paints have really pushed the use of lacquer thinners into the wilderness - hence why buying Tamiya Lacquer thinners is nigh on impossible these days.
Secondly, shipping by air has become prohibitively expensive in the last 10 years. So everything comes by sea. The minimum amount of cargo on a ship is one cubic metre. That's 1,000,000 cubic centimetres! Imagine how many 10ml pots of Tamiya paint you can fit into that space
So when we order directly from Japan or another Asian country, it takes a while because the exporter has to have enough orders to fill a full cubic metre.Comment
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Also means customs simply cant be botherd to cheack a whole container of tamiya paintsComment
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