 Going grey?
Roy Johnson
There are plenty of products – usually hot ones – that you cannot get from shops, official agents or approved resellers in the local market when they are released overseas. Sometimes, the delay is only a couple of weeks but it can be months – even years (remember Xbox?).
Beyond that, there are even more products that quite simply never seem to become available locally. In this category, you have no choice. You either order from overseas or go there and bring it back with you.
If you know what you want and can’t wait for the wheels of commerce to start turning, you can order from overseas if local, “official” availability is going to be delayed, or you can order through companies that specialise in bringing products in, usually for some premium on the price, of course.
This so-called “grey market” is not illegal. You are buying the real thing from a genuine business. They are not the approved local agents or resellers for the product but there is nothing in the law that says they cannot offer this service or that you cannot buy from them.
You can save money ordering overseas, even if you have to pay import duties when you collect the items. But that isn’t really the point, is it? The whole idea is to get the product now, not later.
So, what are the risks?
You might be paying more than the local price. Obviously, the companies that supply products this way need to make a profit. They have to pay the overseas price (exchange rates) and any local import duties, as well as the transport costs.
The big risk is lack of local, after-sales support. If something does go wrong with the product, the local agents won’t support it because they know it’s a grey market item.
The company that sold it to you will refer the problem to the people they bought it from overseas. That wholesaler will refer it to the manufacturer. This can become a time-consuming and frustrating process. It might fall apart completely and you are left without a repair or refund.
That is not a high probability, however. The local supplier wants to stay in business. So do the people they bought it from. Even the manufacturer would rather have a happy customer, no matter what dire warnings they issue in press releases about not supporting grey market products.
What is a legal issue is the validity of whatever warranty the product carries from that manufacturer. It will have some clause to exclude the warranty carrying over to some third party unless the customer bought it from an approved supplier.
The decision you have to make is whether your need for the product outweighs the risk that you might end up with an expensive paperweight that nobody here can or will repair.
If you want to get the latest and greatest, you can look at the following sites (all www):
wantitall.co.za (importer)
have2have.co.za (importer)
jump.co.za (online purchasing portal) |
