Just wanted to ask the question.....where do you get your parts from ? Here in Australia there is a shortage of retailers offering (good) parts for Ducati and if you find one that will get them, they are horrendously priced. I get most of my parts online from the UK or Europe. The exchange rate is what it is, but the postage costs are very reasonable, sometimes even free. I would love to buy some items from the US but postage is often more than the cost of the part ?? Do you guys in the UK find US postage is prohibitive ? I just can't bring myself to buy a $70 part and pay $90 for postage.
Postal rates from the states to UK for some items are ridiculous. Not only that, but we often have to pay import duties as well (sometimes you do, sometimes you don't, it just seems to be the luck of the draw). Fed-ex seem to be the worst in my experience.
I ship to the RofW for a £4.95 mark up - packages generally cost from £8.70 to £13ish with the Royal Mail. US Ebay parts prices always seem to have a high mark up. I import from CCW in the USA including large items like Hyper long range fuel tanks - shipping, import duty, handling charges and vat certainly add up! They have an Australian distributor. If you receive goods without paying the vat it is risky as the HMRC will hit you hard if caught, and if you knowingly do so with a marked down price from the sender then fraud springs to mind :Wideyed:
You obviously haven't had much to do with Parcelforce then, or as I affectionalely call them "The Stasi". Nothing gets through without their pound of flesh and more often than not, their handling fee is the largest chunk. They also end up delaying a parcel you payed express delivery on while they "process" it. I've never had anything stopped so far with UPS.
Ive just sent a link pipe from my RSV4 over to California using ipostparcels.com - 22 quid insured on a 3-4 day service - ive not sent anything abroad with them but use them all the time in the UK. They only charge and extra £1.25 to collect from your door. Log into the webpage...fill out the forms, print'em out and stickem on the box... In stark contrast I had to pay £45.00 for carriage for a lad to send over a velocity stack kit for the hyper from the u.s. - that's coming via usps on a 6 - 7 day service...
Yep - ill be going to Florida next year with the wife and tater tots....a couple of years ago I bought back an rear ohlins for the hyper and a Simpson lid all in my hand luggage...just starting my hunt for another crash helmet now as Simpsons QA is in the toilet...I have a 25 year old street shark in the loft with the inner fabric in perfect nick - my 2 year old simpson's inner lining is falling to pieces...
Digressing again...back to the op's question....wouldn't Europe be the best place for you, for spares....as the crow flies and all that...in relation to Aus...
I use postagesupermarket for larger international parcels, but if they fit within the Royal Mail parcel size they are sometimes the cheapest option.
Very rarely does....last time I went to the post office with something for the us anything over 3kg went stratospheric...
Yep...your right...i can not complain about shipping from EU....and even less to complain about from the UK...:sunglasses::handfist: