SLRHunt & Panamoz

Mclovin101

Mclovin101

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Richard
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Im new to all this but im looking to buy a 5Dmk3 and have noticed that SLRHunt & Panamoz seem to be cheaper then the rest that appear on the internet.

Can someone explain why ?

Im sorry if this has been asked before just seems to good to be true

Thanks
 
Do a search of the threads and you will soon find out why
 
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is SLRHunt a new player in the grey import feild or are you actually talking about SLRhut ?

(for chapter and verse see the links, but in short they are cheaper because they are grey imports , and 'may' not have appropriate VAT etc paid
 
Not in answer to this thread obviously but just out of curiosity, does anybody know why the grey import companies don't offer big lenses? I looked for a Nikon 300 f2.8 and nowhere has any of the big primes. Are they limited to the amount of money a single item can cost or maybe it's just a case of not enough demand?
 
it'll be partly about volume - apart from the saving on duty/uk price differential there is also a saving on buying in bulk (the same is true for white market dealers which generally don't have the big stuff in either) , also partly its about shipping costs as the cost on air freighting a 300 f2.8 is going to cut into the 'saving', and thirdly its about not tying up scads of cash in stock which isnt often purchased (also for the less reputable dealers big heavy things are harder to smuggle)

that said the big boys like kerso/hdew/panamoz etc can generally get you stuff thats not on their websites if you ask
 
htid said:
Not in answer to this thread obviously but just out of curiosity, does anybody know why the grey import companies don't offer big lenses? I looked for a Nikon 300 f2.8 and nowhere has any of the big primes. Are they limited to the amount of money a single item can cost or maybe it's just a case of not enough demand?
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Just guessing, but as Camera bodies don't attract Import duty and everything else does the risk is greater in not making a profit! :exit:
 
htid said:
Not in answer to this thread obviously but just out of curiosity, does anybody know why the grey import companies don't offer big lenses? I looked for a Nikon 300 f2.8 and nowhere has any of the big primes. Are they limited to the amount of money a single item can cost or maybe it's just a case of not enough demand?
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Digital Rev have the 300mm f2.8, 400 f2.8, 500 & 600mm f4 lenses and other long lenses. The have stopped, by the look of things selling the older versions. >

http://www.digitalrev.com/product/nikon-af-s-nikkor-300mm/NzY2Ng_A_A

http://www.digitalrev.com/category/nikon-nikkor-telephoto-lens/MTQy
 
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You should of course pay the import duty and VAT on the products and you're bucking the system if you don't.
<rant>
However since I found out that together with 999 other people we paid as much in tax over the last 10 years as Google did I don't feel so bad any more - Oh, and I know how much I earn not like the Google CEO.
</rant>
 
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drounding said:
You should of course pay the import duty and VAT on the products and you're bucking the system if you don't.
<rant>
However since I found out that together with 999 other people we paid as much in tax over the last 10 years as Google did I don't feel so bad any more - Oh, and I know how much I earn not like the Google CEO.
</rant>
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On the other hand

you should of course pay import duty and vat - you are breaking the law and risking serious penalties if you don't

What google were doing is avoidance which while not ethical isnt illegal

<rant>
what I don't get is people who wouldnt steal a camera or buy a stolen camera being happy to buy a smuggled one ... you could apply the logic above to stealing ... " you know i realise stealing is wrong and everything, but since hearing about the hatton garden heist where millions were stolen I feel less bad about nicking mine out of this guys bag on the tube, its hardly the same thing, and anywy he looked like he could afford it...."

TLDR version two wrongs don't make a right
</rant >

edit - for legal reasons I'd clariffy that i'm not saying every grey import is smuggled, but some definitely are
 
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big soft moose said:
On the other hand

you should of course pay import duty and vat - you are breaking the law and risking serious penalties if you don't

What google were doing is avoidance which while not ethical isnt illegal

<rant>
what I don't get is people who wouldnt steal a camera or buy a stolen camera being happy to buy a smuggled one ... you could apply the logic above to stealing ... " you know i realise stealing is wrong and everything, but since hearing about the hatton garden heist where millions were stolen I feel less bad about nicking mine out of this guys bag on the tube, its hardly the same thing, and anywy he looked like he could afford it...."

TLDR version two wrongs don't make a right
</rant >

edit - for legal reasons I'd clariffy that i'm not saying every grey import is smuggled, but some definitely are
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As a higher rate tax payer who despises this government and the things my taxes are spent on, I would feel no guilt in buying a grey import (but I never have and don't plan to at the moment). I know not everybody will see this as an excuse but I've never complained about google/starbucks etc. avoiding tax so I don't see why I shouldn't too.
 
htid said:
As a higher rate tax payer who despises this government and the things my taxes are spent on, I would feel no guilt in buying a grey import (but I never have and don't plan to at the moment). I know not everybody will see this as an excuse but I've never complained about google/starbucks etc. avoiding tax so I don't see why I shouldn't too.
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Before this develops into the usual bar room brawl perhaps the late Mr Healey's quote might be informative when deciding when to use the avoidance or evasion term

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.
 
taxboy said:
Before this develops into the usual bar room brawl perhaps the late Mr Healey's quote might be informative when deciding when to use the avoidance or evasion term

The difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion is the thickness of a prison wall.
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Is it actually illegal to buy from sites such as these then? I always assumed it was dodgey but in no way illegal otherwise the sites would be closed down. Am I completely wrong there?
 
htid said:
). I know not everybody will see this as an excuse but I've never complained about google/starbucks etc. avoiding tax so I don't see why I shouldn't too.
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Absolutely , if you can avoid tax legally go for it - my position on this is that tax avodance is the responsibility of the HMRC / Govt - if they closed all the loopholes it wouldnt happen

Tax evasion on the other hand is the responsibility of the perpetrator, as its already been ruled against and doing it anyway is illegal

My position on grey importing is similar

If its cheaper to import it than buy it here even with all appropriate duty and VAT paid , then thats great , fill your boots (though in practice this is only occasionally true , like at camera luanches where a body thats $999 dollars is for some reason priced at £999)

Equally if a uk company can source stock from another import zone legally with tax and duty paid, then yes great , no reason why we should be out of pocket because of weird pricing practices

however if its only cheaper imported or sourced because its smuggled in or misdeclared without propper duty and tax being paid, then if you want to buy it fine (its eaxh persons ethical choice whether they wish to be a criminal or buy from one) but lets not pretend the goods are anything other than smuggled.

And from a dealer perspective if you are based in Hong Kong, or Bejing, or LA, or whever - be honest about it, don't mislead buyers by pretending to be UK based if you arent.
 
htid said:
Is it actually illegal to buy from sites such as these then? I always assumed it was dodgey but in no way illegal otherwise the sites would be closed down. Am I completely wrong there?
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Ostensibly they are brought into the Country by them but you, as the Purchaser, are technically the Importer; hence the one liable for any Duties. So, that makes them operating within the law. The Purchaser, however, is thus evading taxes (assuming the purchaser pays nothing extra after declaring to HMRC)
 
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htid said:
Is it actually illegal to buy from sites such as these then? I always assumed it was dodgey but in no way illegal otherwise the sites would be closed down. Am I completely wrong there?
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The overseas sellers arent doing anything 'wrong' because it is the customer who is the importer , so if someone buys a camera from over seas and doesnt pay the VAT then its the customer not the importer who has committed an offence.

the only proviso to that is where the more dodgy ones intentionally mislead the customer about their location and/or whether duty/vat is included in the price - it is still the buyers responsibility to pay the vat as ignorance of the law is not a defence, but the seller is 'possibly' guilty of deception (except that they are not in UK juristriction)

Also its worth noting that even where a dealer is doing something overtly illegal, shutting the website down is not easy as the server its located on is probably in some third world s*** hole anyway (the internet is not really policed per se - which is why you can buy all sorts of "illegal in the UK" stuff from it should you wish)
 
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Frankly, unless you are whiter than white in all aspects of your life all this self-declaration stuff strikes me as double standards.

So it is breaking the law if you get something and don't declare it, fine... but then do you report yourself to the police every time you go 33mph in a 30 zone or drop a bit of litter on the floor or some other petty law that people break all the time?

Because if you paid the £60 every time you went over the speed limit I think the Treasury would be considerably happier than if you declared your occasional camera equipment purchase from outside the EU.
 
JYC said:
Frankly, unless you are whiter than white in all aspects of your life all this self-declaration stuff strikes me as double standards.

So it is breaking the law if you get something and don't declare it, fine... but then do you report yourself to the police every time you go 33mph in a 30 zone or drop a bit of litter on the floor or some other petty law that people break all the time?

Because if you paid the £60 every time you went over the speed limit I think the Treasury would be considerably happier than if you declared your occasional camera equipment purchase from outside the EU.
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Personally I drive inside the speed limit most of the time - I don't feel the need to declare it if i accidentally go slightly over on the motor way - but it doesnt take a rocket scientist to see the differrence between doing something accidentally and deliberately choosing to break the law (also tax evasion is a criminal offence - minor motoring offences are not counted as a criminal record, tax evasion is - which is important if your job requires a clean DBS )
 
You're changing your argument now, there was nothing about whether it led to a criminal record or not - it was simply that something was illegal and therefore wrong, so don't do it :)

I'm glad we can agree we all break the law in small ways. I personally don't see why someone should be made to feel particularly more guilty about buying a grey import compared to going over the speed limit. After all going over the speed limit could be the difference between someone dying if you hit them rather than just being injured. Obviously you view it differently, I don't have a problem with that in itself but I just dislike how judgmental people are about this particular issue. I don't go around calling everyone who goes over the speed limit (whether accidental or not) a child killer!

Also the 'criminal offence' argument is exaggerated. I remember a story in the news a year or two back where George Clooney's wife, a top lawyer, 'smuggled' her engagement ring back into the UK and didn't declare it at customs. Pretty sure she quietly paid up and won't have a criminal record...
 
JYC said:
You're changing your argument now, there was nothing about whether it led to a criminal record or not - it was simply that something was illegal and therefore wrong, so don't do it :)

I'm glad we can agree we all break the law in small ways. I personally don't see why someone should be made to feel particularly more guilty about buying a grey import compared to going over the speed limit. After all going over the speed limit could be the difference between someone dying if you hit them rather than just being injured. Obviously you view it differently, I don't have a problem with that in itself but I just dislike how judgmental people are about this particular issue. I don't go around calling everyone who goes over the speed limit (whether accidental or not) a child killer!

Also the 'criminal offence' argument is exaggerated. I remember a story in the news a year or two back where George Clooney's wife, a top lawyer, 'smuggled' her engagement ring back into the UK and didn't declare it at customs. Pretty sure she quietly paid up and won't have a criminal record...
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if you hit someone at 70mph or 75 it makes very little difference tbh - I'm more serious about not speeding in thirty limits - that aside end of the day this isnt about making anyone feel guilty about buying a grey import - its about making everyone aware of the facts so they can make an informed choice whether to so or not.

If you want to choose to evade your tax (or for that matter to get your camera equipment off some dodgy geezer in the local pub or on gumtree) then thats entirely your perogative , but if someone who doesnt know what grey importing is asks the question they need to be aware of the import situation so they can make the choice in the first place (especially as some grey importers go out of their way to pretend to be uk companies when they really arent by using virtual office facilities, claiming to have uk warehouses which turnout to be couriers shipping depots, or having uk phone numbers which are forwarded to hongkong)

End of the day you don't call everyone who speeds a child killer because they havent killed a child, the worst you can call them is a speeder. Someone who consciously chooses to evade tax is a tax evader because they have evaded paying thier tax.. simple really
 
Well I think your first post made that quite clear, you could easily have stopped there but you do bang on about it a lot. And you clearly are trying to make people feel bad about it by equating grey importing to handling stolen goods, when really they aren't the same thing at all.

I'd rather liken it to going 75 on a motorway :)
 
JYC said:
by equating grey importing to handling stolen goods, when really they aren't the same thing at all.

I'd rather liken it to going 75 on a motorway :)
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They are the same thing - both tax evasion and recieving are illegal ways of getting your hands on cheap equipment. They arent the same as occasional accidental speeding, because of the element of deliberate choice in breaking the law, they are similar in nature to deliberately choosing to drive at 40 in a 30, or 75 in a 70 but i don't condone that either.

End of the day people can choose to do what they like, and if they choose to flout the law then they probably arent going to be put off by someone pointing out that what they are doing is illegal - but lets not pretend that evading tax isnt a criminal offence.

Also its worth noting that grey import per se does not mean smuggled - you could (and possibly some importers do) import from another zone pay all your duty and taxes and still make a profit where prices are seriously inflated in the UK/europe - and I don't have a problem with that at all, but i'd like to see greater transparency and the provision of a customs receipt demonstrating the payment of duty etc as a matter of course.
 
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I'm not pretending anything, the law is clear and I have not suggested otherwise.

I'm more amused by how you can pretend to yourself that you breaking the law is fine as long as you do it accidentally.
 
The difference in these examples is quite plain - to me at least.

The Law requires you to DECLARE that you have imported goods into the Country. I know of no legal requirement to declare to an official that you have been speeding! To do so is purely voluntary. (I'm quite happy to be contradicted)
 
Well this has taken a more amusing turn than the normal 'grey' threads! At the end of the day it's personally choice once you know the facts. I can see both sides of it, arguing about it just goes around in circles. I'm sure at some point HMRC and the UK sellers/manufacturers are going to clamp down on it. In the end we will have less UK shops to and limited support of UK trade shows as it's the UK/EU arms of the manufacturers that support these shows. One thing I'm sure of is I wouldn't be so vocal on a publicly searchable forum stating what I've bought as grey imports just in case the HMRC did investigate.
 
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rob-nikon said:
Perhaps it's easier if the first reply directed the OP to the sticky (and list of other very similar threads) and then lock the thread as these always go the same way each time!
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I thought there was a thread on this subject a number of years ago that ended without any heated discussion, I could be wrong though. Did not want to use the word argument in case anyone disagreed:)
 
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nog said:
I thought there was a thread on this subject a number of years ago that ended without any heated discussion, I could be wrong though. Did not want to use the word argument in case anyone disagreed:)
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These threads always go the same way I'm afraid. I do wish people would search instead of ask the same questions over and over which inevitably ends in the same argument by the same people.
 
Wow, a very large can of ethical worms opened here, found in Padora's box rescued from a room containing a cat and a number of pigeons just after the balloon went up.

Surely the camera companies and cross border pricing policies have some responsibility here? If their pricing was consistent there would be less of a difference although I appreciate 20% VAT is a major contributor too.

As for tax avoiders v tax evaders only having the thickness of a prison wall between them....tell all of those ISA holders, those immoral tax avoiders.
 
JYC said:
I'm more amused by how you can pretend to yourself that you breaking the law is fine as long as you do it accidentally.
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Did I say it was fine ? - I said it happens , not that it was a good thing to do - also i think you'll find that the principal of whether someone acted "with intent" to commit a crime is pretty central to a lot of criminal law - for example you'll get a heavier punishment for possesion with intent, being armed with intent, going equiped with intent , wounding with intent and so on that you will if you commit the same act acidentally
 
The trouble with most grey import sites is that they tell you that you are the importer and then go on to say that they have paid all required duties and taxes, some will even give vat invoices. Then they charge a price that suggests this can't possibly be so unless the net cost is lower than normal retail prices suggest.
 
Merluza said:
The trouble with most grey import sites is that they tell you that you are the importer and then go on to say that they have paid all required duties and taxes, some will even give vat invoices. Then they charge a price that suggests this can't possibly be so unless the net cost is lower than normal retail prices suggest.
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that is the root of the issue , I've asked several grey import companies if they would be able to provide me with a customs receipt showing that import vat (and Duty in the case of lenses)has been paid - not one has agreed to do so yet, and there are a wide range of creative exuses why not, my favourite being "because of the data protection act" :LOL:

A Vat invoice per se doesnt prove that VAT was paid on import - merely that VAT has been charged on your transaction with them.

If I were to find a grey importer willing to prove that correct vat and duty had been paid on the transaction and import, or willing to refund the cost if i voluntarily declared the value to HMRC then i'd be happy to do business with them, as I don't see anything wrong with saving money on inflated uk prices so long as its legal
 
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I see gumtree mentioned (flamed) a lot by aposter here. Had a bad experience with it? as not all the stuff on there is stolen or dodgy.

My caravan wasn't when I sold it on there, neither was my D7000.

One bad apple etc.
 
big soft moose said:
A Vat invoice per se doesnt prove that VAT was paid on import - merely that VAT has been charged on your transaction with them.
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That's very interesting, I hadn't thought of that. It hardly sounds legal and I would expect the taxman to be knocking, but where does that leave the final purchaser?
 
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GreenNinja67 said:
I see gumtree mentioned (flamed) a lot by aposter here. Had a bad experience with it? as not all the stuff on there is stolen or dodgy.

My caravan wasn't when I sold it on there, neither was my D7000.

One bad apple etc.
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Not everrything on gumtree is stolen sure, but it has a lot more stolen stuff sold on it than say ebay (you'll note that what I actually said was i could acheive much better prices by buying from scumbags in the local pub or on gumtree ... the key being that everything theiving scumbags sell is nicked, not the means by which they sell it )

Merluza said:
That's very interesting, I hadn't thought of that. It hardly sounds legal and I would expect the taxman to be knocking, but where does that leave the final purchaser?
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In order for you to be charged VAT on it the company needs to be VAT registered, which pretty much means UK based, ergo in most cases the goods they are selling you are already in the UK so you arent subject to the issues about import - so if any evasion is occuring its probably when they import the goods (that said some companies that offer a vat receipt also have the proviso on their website that you are the importer so who knows what is going on there )
 
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