Buying stuff from overseas

[tw2]

I see the subject come up occasionally so I thought I would post my experiences in case it helps anyone. Of course between Toyota and BNT who offer discounts to paid club members there is a lot on offer in NZ. However a lot of custom products, aftermarket items and some OEM things are either not available here or too overpriced to consider. Places to consider:

More mainsteam everyday stuff
twosrus https://twosrus.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=22 generally good for OEM and mild aftermarket uprgrades, horrendous international shipping costs (US$100-200 sometimes)
prime driven https://primedriven.com/collections/suspension-steering OEM, aftermarket, occasional custom products, sales and deals, average to poor international shipping costs
mr2 heaven https://mr2heaven.com/collections OEM, aftermarket, plenty of custom in house products, sales and deals, average to poor international shipping costs
There are heaps of parts resellers, I have used http://www.toyotapartsdeal.com and they have been good, easy to use website, cheaper or the same as all the other toyota parts stores, somewhat expensive shipping to NZ (easy to get over US$100 shipping with fairly small orders). However most parts sellers especially the online dealerships won't ship internationally at all.

Custom fabricated items
RacerX http://www.racerxfabrication.com custom fabricated items for the MR2, somewhat pricey, very high quality, often the only product in existence for the job at hand, ok shipping costs
Wilhelm Raceworks https://wilhelmraceworks.com/blog/2gr-swap lots of V6 swap products, custom fabrication for brakes and suspension, I don't have experience with their shipping
Frankenstein Motorworks https://frankensteinmotorworks.squarespace.com/shop a few custom V6 products, I don't have experience with their shipping

Every possible OEM part and many aftermarket too
MR2 Ben, https://mr2-ben.co.uk or also on ebay http://www.ebaystores.com/MR2-BEN can be quite cheap for some hard to find items that you would otherwise only find at the dealer. Based in the UK so shipping can be ugly. I found them useful for small things, 3sge items since they received the same cars as our market or RHD specific items unavailable in the US.

Japan
This is generally quite expensive but if you want some JDM awesomeness and have the cash everything is available. Wheels, exhausts, everything...
There is https://www.rhdjapan.com and https://www.nengun.com for most common brands from Apexi to HKS to stuff I have never heard of. There are many others, shipping is not terrible but NZ customs will be waiting for you. I have also heard that shipping is not always the most timely or reliable from Japan. Always stick to Fedex or other highly reputable international shipping companies with full and timely insurance (some will happily settle and pay you out but only after 3-6 months of investigation). Japanese post doesn't always work out well.
Fortyone http://www.fortyone.co.nz is a Wellington based company that will order everything you could possibly want from Japan, deal with all customs, duty, shipping, paperwork, the whole process. Again it is costly but they take all the risk out of it to get things done. They give you a wide range of insurance choices and shipping companies to use all immediately available online to view, everything from Japan post to Fedex, DHL and options to ship in an "end of the month" consignment to save money.
http://www.Amayama.com for hard to find OEM items

Shipping
This is the biggest problem with buying from overseas. It often requires careful calculations to determine if what you want is worth it. Of course if it isn't available here in NZ then it doesn't matter but where and how it is shipped can make a difference. Ebay can have some fantastic shipping rates for the same products from different vendors. They also have plenty of terrible ones.
Youshop
Hopefully everyone is familiar with youshop. It is run by NZpost, they are based in Oregon, USA and in the UK also. There are plenty of freight forwarding companies around but youshop specialise in shipping to NZ which makes it often cheaper and more streamlined. They are not the fastest, it usually takes 3 days from them receiving your parcel for them to then process it and send you an email to select shipping options. They offer 5-9 days and 9-14 day deliveries. Most of the year they exceed these dates by a huge margin and arrive several days earlier than expected. Most of the time their prices are good but you need smaller parcels to benefit the most. They are almost always cheaper than US based companies but not always. They can do surprisingly oversized and heavy items but charge accordingly (still cheaper than any others). They have a calculator for working out the likely costs. https://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/youshop/youshop-pricing
Problems
Weight is one thing, volumetric weight is another altogether. You can't usually control how items are packed and if your parcel is somewhat lighter or chucked in a much larger box than necessary, it will be charged based on volume rather than weight and might be a lot more expensive to ship than you expected. Youshop have some repacking options but it isn't often that helpful, and they charge you for the repacking service. Despite this it will still end up saving you a little bit of money, they won't do it unless it makes it cheaper. You can often see the weight of parcels before you purchase online using some stores but often you need to ask for the dimensions of the box and sellers often are unwilling to work this out before you make a purchase.
GST, duty, other garbage
I understand the customs philosophy perfectly, the government wants to receive GST for all spending by New Zealander's despite it being overseas, fine. The limit still appears to be NZ$400. The fun begins at getting to the NZ$400.
- Yes the cost of the good converted to NZ$ is the obvious starting point.
- The next part is adding the shipping cost (if there is one, ebay is usually free) to get to the youshop hub in Oregon. This needs to be converted to NZ$ and added on.
- The next one is the youshop shipping bill itself. They claim the cost is zero rated for GST. I took this to mean they are never going to charge GST on it. Wrong. Add this cost to the other two.
If all 3 are over $400 you will almost definitely get a nice letter from customs. Be careful with your currency conversion, I use the ANZ site to check the trends https://www.anz.co.nz/personal/migrants ... s/nzd-usd/ Always err on the side of caution by 2 cents if you are cutting it close to the limit. Customs seem to use the currency conversion rate on the day the parcel comes in rather than the day you made your purchase. If the rate gets worse, you may find yourself over the limit. Sometimes it can vary by 1 cent during a single day. If you use paypal (everyone should) then always select to pay in US$ as your bank will give you a better conversion rate to NZ$ than paypal.
Now what
Prepare to bend over. Expect the 15% GST, expect 10-20% duty fee whatever this is supposed to be for- it isn't always charged, I think they spin a wheel to decide, biosecurity fee $20.36 + GST of $3.05, import transaction fee $25.44 + GS $3.52, you feel like they are just making things up now.

My latest one, I thought I was just under the limit.
Import duty $30.10
GST $97.81
Biosecurity $20.36 + $3.05
Import trans $25.44 + $3.52
Total $180.58 fun

Sometimes you are better off breaking your order down and shipping it in two parts to save the garbage. Beware if you buy a few times from the same company in a short period they will still add the costs together and charge you customs for the lot. On the other hand if you save up everything you want to buy for one transaction the fixed fees (biosecurity, brokerage, import transaction fees) become less relevant and it becomes a lot more attractive again. Consider spreading your order out to a few different companies if the prices are similar, ie twosrus, prime and mr2 heaven, they carry a lot of the same items and are usually priced within a few $ of each other. Also spread things out over a few months if you are not in a hurry.
It is all here, I wouldn't bother wading through it https://www.customs.govt.nz/personal/du ... llowances/

[tw2]

Forgot one thing- Brokerage

If you get stung for customs you will also get charged a brokerage fee. You can broker the transaction using youshop (they rip you off $64 I think now, used to be $46), any broker you want (yellow pages) or do it yourself. It is extremely easy, all you need to do is forward:
- the letter you receive from customs (contains a number starting with an S to identify it),
- a full invoice/proof of payment for goods,
- youshop shipping cost receipt,
- passport/licence copy
to your local customs office and they will send you an invoice. For anyone in Hamilton your local office is Tauranga since we don't seem to have a port or even a useful airport. Give your office a call https://www.customs.govt.nz/contact-us/ and they will give you the email to use. Tauranga is [email protected]

General tip
If you are comparing to prices here to the USA, I wouldn't bother looking much further into it unless the price is approximately double the numerical value (ignore the currency differences for this). For example, an upper radiator bracket from Toyota is NZ$125 and it is US$55 from toyotapartsdeal so this would definitely be worth looking into. The margin will need to be larger if you are expecting to be over the NZ$400 limit. Also consider warranties, I very rarely buy electronics from overseas for this reason. Most car parts are pretty resilient and OEM parts especially are very low risk. Warranties and consumer protection is much less strict than it is here. Often only 1 year and shipping parts back to the US can get very expensive.

[85AW20v]

Great write-up!! Can you please clarify in $$ terms what you mean by:
- horrendous shipping costs
- average to poor shipping costs
- somewhat expensive

Cheers!

[tw2]

It's really just my general impression from ordering things from these companies so people know what to expect.

For example twosrus had US$111 for shipping for sway bar end links, reinforcing plates and a few much lighter items. Their shipping to Oregon was about US$17 and to NZ about NZ$40 via youshop from memory. Fairly terrible, some of their shipping is upwards of US$200. Youshop can sometimes save you 70% or more.

RacerX was US$70 to NZ for three of their wonderful machined creations, 3 day fedex. It would have been cheaper using youshop but only by $10-15 or so. Not bad really. Sometimes it is just easier.

Average to poor usually depends on the item in question. For prime driven some things are economical to ship direct but most are a few $ to $30-40 cheaper via youshop.