Shipping guitar from US to SA

kapepper

hello!

Need some advice or experiences from others:

Assume I want to buy a guitar in case from the US (through Ebay for example)

I know that USPS priority does not ship guitars in case to SA because generally a guitar in case will exceed the allowed length accepted by SA post office (or it it shouldjust fit the measurements of the SA post office)

Then you have to go the DHL, UPS, fedex ectetera.

Is this correct? anybody experiences with this (especially pricewise)

Any suggestions which service provider to use and how much it is gonna cost?

thx

Jman76

Try out used gear on musiciansfriend.com, subject to your order exceeding $500 they'll ship down this way at their own cost. All round a pretty sweet deal.

here's a link: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/browse/used/products.jsp

Sebber

Not all guitar cases are of equal size, I do know that the cases the Fenders come in (not the molded SKB cases, I don't know about them) USPS will ship to SA, or did so up until last year.

From my experience going DHL/UPS/Fedex/etc is prohibitively expensive, more expensive than buying a decent hard case locally: in those instances the seller will likely offer to package the guitar with the neck removed (in the package, obviously), if it’s a bolt on neck guitar… but then you don’t get the case you would have paid for in the overall price.

If I remember right, USPS priority international shipping will add US$150-200 to the price, and then you have to pay the import duties/SAPO handling fees, which depend on the price of the item you’ve purchased.

Sebber

J-man wrote: Try out used gear on musiciansfriend.com, subject to your order exceeding $500 they'll ship down this way at their own cost. All round a pretty sweet deal.

here's a link: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/browse/used/products.jsp

Holy crap, I didn't know that! I'll be shopping online there more often, that's for sure!

Jman76

I believe if an item is considered "used", import duties don't apply merely VAT?

kapepper

thanks sebber and j

it actually concerns an acoustic guitar, standard size and on ebay a lot of sellers already told me that the case was to big to ship to sa due to size restrictions

racman

No import duties on guitars, only VAT.

I am about to ship an electric from USA and the cheapest by far was from Dawnwing locally (about a third of the price from Fedex, DHL, UPS etc). I had one guitar (electric) shipped via USPS at a very reasonable rate but this was in a gig bag and a standard Fender box with LOTS of padding inside. Fortunately I requested the guitar without case so I didn't have to forfeit the price of the case. Hope this helps a little.

epictring

EVERYTHING you need to know about buying from Musiciansfriend can be found here:

http://www.guitarforum.co.za/guitar-gear/buying-used-from-musiciansfriend/

enjoy