Hornby DCC with SOUND!!!!?????

"Steve W" wrote

I can't see that being cost-effective I'm afraid. Couriers are only really interested in regular repeat orders which is not a very likely scenario for the type of transaction we're talking about.

Exactly!

John.

"Steve W" wrote in news:4334a758$0$16329$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader01.plus.net:

...

Well they were - to a point, it was all beta software to be used for testing and further development, so they were samples - of a kind.

Likewise if you are a retailer or the like it would make sense to aquire a sample of a product whilst trying to decide whether to stock it ir not. Perfectly reasonable approach to my way of thinking that would be appropriate to one or two posters to this forum.

I'm getting the impression we are lucky. Or our tax dept is more sensible in not collecting money that costs more to collect than is received. In the case of model railway items, the magic number is $400 (about GBP160 depending on the exchange rate), although I believe it has recently increased but nobody seems to know what to. There is a member of the BRMA (British Railway Modellers of Australia) who works for the tax dept so the info will filter through eventually...

And Australia Post are known to be fairly efficient and I usually get anything I order from Hattons about a week after they send it. Sadly I wish Bachmann's Australian importers were that efficient (limited range imported and asking prices rather silly - they obviously only do it to be able to sell the American stuff or haven't heard of the internet)...8^( (Hornby's are pretty good though, prices vaguely comparable to the UK, or at least not too much higher, and we get it a few months after you do - it's still worth buying from the UK though)

Here in the UK the magic number is 30GBP IIRC, it's very low and certain MS beta testers got hit on one batch of beta test CDs even though they were marked as $3.00 each for value.

For personal imports (i.e. at the airport) it's more but it's still very low £120 from memory. Amazingly the Chancellor did propose raising this, but it's an EU wide tariff limit, so I have no idea if it was going to happen.

Intra EU stuff is easy and doesn't have any of the limits. Since I model German stuff in Z Scale this means I do a lot of direct importing, you just have fun sending funds over to the Germans as often shops don't accept credit cards. I have been hit with a 40GBP bill for importing a 80GBP keyboard in the past so I feel the pain. There may well be an opportunity for someone to setup offering european wide distribution for smaller manufacturers.

"Peter Ibbotson" wrote

For a government that espouses 'free trade' it's about time all duty on imports was dropped.

John.