exhaust o/s shipping question...argh!

has anyone had to do it? any idea roughly what the costs involved are? for myself i'm talking about shipping from USA to Australia.

the reason for my frustration is i ordered a shiny new mac 4-1 system from bike bandit before chrissy, hoping to see it before my planned trip at the end of the week. now usually they've been fairly prompt and helpful but this time nothing but 'in progress' status on my order for days. given the holiday season and all i thought i'd give them the benefit of of the doubt and wait some...still nothing. finally shoot them an email and get a reply this morning -

"The size or weight of an item in your order requires an additional shipping charge of US$45.46. Please respond to this email with your authorization for the additional charge and we will begin processing your order. If we do not hear from you within the next 3 business days, Your order will be cancelled. We look forward to your reply."

for info the original cost was pipes - $296USD/S+H $79USD/tax $59USD = $434USD = $634AUD.

now (only after I've followed it up over a week later), I'm told the shipping is going to cost me an additional $66AUD? and by default this information lets me know to stop being excited about pipes arriving in time, not going to happen.

I don't know if this is normal, but the price to get custom pipes made locally is now perfectly feasible.

Shipping pipes to Australia requires CAREFUL packing to get the package UNDER the Aussie postal package size restrictions.

79" combined length and girth (the 4 sides).

V&H pipes come is boxes that're too large for this size restriction - unless the box is cut down.

27" length x 14" x 12" just makes the 79" size limit.

With V&H pipes we have to modify the V&H box to get the size down.

IF the package is under the size restriction, you are looking at a little over US$100 for shipping.

Without the package size, the pipe has to ship via Fedex or UPS - a very expensive proposition.

I would imagine the MAC pipes are also in an oversizzed box, and the company you are buying from does understand international shipping very well.

thanks for making that clearer Jeff. Just got off live chat with bike bandit and they were sending them fedex which confirms what you were saying. they also said it'd still take 10-15 days to get here, and that it was on back order until mid-jan. apparently 'back order' = available...two different things i thought.
being the master of multi-tasking i was talking to Daniel at zpower here in Oz on the phone at the same time, and confirmed they can build me a tranzac 4-1 system for $649AUD, and it'll only take about a week, sold.

thanks again for the info Jeff, and please pass on my thanks to Cheryll for being such a help with the gaskets this morning.

image wrote:

I don't know if this is normal, but the price to get custom pipes made locally is now perfectly feasible.

Do you have a local area ebay? I see new Mac pipes on ebay all the time for the $250 price range. Not sure what to suggest on shipping because the prices have gone through the roof. They used to say the reason was fuel cost, but fuel is cheap again and they are still gouging.

Reminds me of back in the early 80's when fast-food chicken was really cheap compared to hamburgers...... all of a sudden, the chicken places raised the prices about 50% claiming that a lot of the chickens had the "chicken flu"..... well, the prices never came back down when the chickens got well and shipping prices are never going back down either.

BTW: how in the world can a US based company charge an Aussie sales tax? It's not even legal for them to charge sales tax on an out-of-state US sale.

bountyhunter wrote:

BTW: how in the world can a US based company charge an Aussie sales tax? It's not even legal for them to charge sales tax on an out-of-state US sale.

yeah i asked about that...they claimed it was an import duty tax charged by Australia to bring it in. Strangely enough I've never had this on any other item, regardless of size that I've had shipped. I know of a few where it should have been, but the shipper labeled the item as a gift and it came through no worries.

I have never heard of this tax either. Maybe Jeff could comment. I find it quite odd. I ship a number of sets of carburetors to Austria every year plus other places and never heard of a tax. If duty/customs are to be paid, the local customs office levies these charges on the local buyer.

image wrote:

bountyhunter wrote:

BTW: how in the world can a US based company charge an Aussie sales tax? It's not even legal for them to charge sales tax on an out-of-state US sale.

yeah i asked about that...they claimed it was an import duty tax charged by Australia to bring it in.

Gotcha.... that's a TARIFF and now you know why people hate them so much. It's basically countries waging economic war on each other to protect native industries in the own countries.

It's probably the 5% tariff the Aussie customs people impose on exhaust systems. Duty should only be paid if the total of the goods and shipping exceed AU$1,000

must've gone up?? at $296 unit price, charging 59 for the tariff is closer to 20%. :huh:

They are probably charging 10% import duty on the cost of the parts AND shipping, then 5% import tariff on the cost of the pipe and duty combined.

When we ship large orders of pipes to Australia, we get hit with this stuff. Usually smaller shipments don't get dinged with the duty. I think whoever they are using for shipping is collecting the duty and tariff upfront to give you a complete 'all-in' cost.

ah i see...def scared me off getting anything like that from o/s in the near future...i don't mind paying that bit(sometimes quite a large 'bit'!) extra, if it means i'm getting what i want/need...i know especially with smaller items the shipping can often end up costing more than the item price itself. i guess i just like to be told what the go is from the start, i'd thought bike bandit would ship enough exhausts to have the correct amount factored into the calculators etc, plus not being told what was going on until i pushed for the info...here i go again sooky-lala's...time to go to my happy place!