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Bassole · 29th December 2005

Well, the O300D are 1590 euro (with VAT) at www.Thomann.de. In the US, we can buy them without VAT, so they are 1353 Euro. Then we have to convert to dollars, which is around $1.18 per Euro, so the total dollar cost per speaker is 1596US$. Just have to remember that shipping will cost around $165, and the credit card fee for foreign currency exchange is another 3%. The duty tax is 4.9% for loudspeakers, and UPS tacks on an additional $25 for other duty fees. Add in the 1000W step-up transformer at $75, and the total actually comes out somewhere around $3,700.

I’ve heard that if you tell the vendor not to include the European power cord in the package, that the product is considered to be “Not A Finished Product”, and that might be a way to bypass the 4.9% Duty Tax. Anyone have any experience with this?

The best I can get the O300D in the US is $5,564 total, so that saves me $1,864. You just don’t get a US warranty with the German monitors, unless you ship them back to Germany. IF the monitors require major warranty service I could send them back to Germany about 4 or 5 times with the money I saved (highly unlikely it will require this much service during the warranty period). For smaller repairs I would take them to a local speaker repair shop. I’d probably just buy another pair if something went horribly wrong with them after the warranty period, and this would be the worst-case scenario. It’s a bit of a gamble, of course, but German products are typically engineered and built like tanks anyway, so I’m not too worried.

29th December 2005	#15
Bassole Gear interested Joined: Oct 2005 Posts: 20 Thread Starter	Well, the O300D are 1590 euro (with VAT) at www.Thomann.de. In the US, we can buy them without VAT, so they are 1353 Euro. Then we have to convert to dollars, which is around $1.18 per Euro, so the total dollar cost per speaker is 1596US$. Just have to remember that shipping will cost around $165, and the credit card fee for foreign currency exchange is another 3%. The duty tax is 4.9% for loudspeakers, and UPS tacks on an additional $25 for other duty fees. Add in the 1000W step-up transformer at $75, and the total actually comes out somewhere around $3,700. I’ve heard that if you tell the vendor not to include the European power cord in the package, that the product is considered to be “Not A Finished Product”, and that might be a way to bypass the 4.9% Duty Tax. Anyone have any experience with this? The best I can get the O300D in the US is $5,564 total, so that saves me $1,864. You just don’t get a US warranty with the German monitors, unless you ship them back to Germany. IF the monitors require major warranty service I could send them back to Germany about 4 or 5 times with the money I saved (highly unlikely it will require this much service during the warranty period). For smaller repairs I would take them to a local speaker repair shop. I’d probably just buy another pair if something went horribly wrong with them after the warranty period, and this would be the worst-case scenario. It’s a bit of a gamble, of course, but German products are typically engineered and built like tanks anyway, so I’m not too worried.