[Ilugc] Need your suggestion for buying Laptop
- From: rajasuperman@xxxxxxxxx (Raja Subramanian)
- Date: Fri Apr 21 14:16:11 2006
Hi,
On 4/21/06, Binand Sethumadhavan <binand@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 21/04/06, Raja Subramanian <rajasuperman@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
EU is typically not that much cheaper than India. Laptops are
significantly cheaper in the USA and Singapore.
On the other hand, if you purchase the laptop in the UK and export it
overseas within 15 days of purchase, you are eligible for a VAT
refund. The VAT in the UK is 17.5% and the refund on a laptop costing
?600 can be significant.
The process is not as simple as it sounds. You cannot waiver the VAT
at the store itself, i.e. no duty free shopping available in stores.
You must pay the full price at the store and claim the VAT back later.
The VAT counter at Heathrow never opened its doors on time (for me
atleast), and I never managed to get a VAT refund. There is the
option of filling up some forms and doing the entire process through
the post, but thats an entirely different can of worms.
Check out www.dixons.co.uk and www.argos.co.uk to sample the kind of
prices and models available on the UK high street. Also, look at
individual vendors' websites for their offerings too.
Large retalier stores in the USA www.cdw.com, www.newegg.com, offer
great deals and rebates. Its much easier to find/compare laptops on
the cdw.com website than ibm.com itself! However, the lower end
models are simply not listed in their catalogs. The savings are big
only if you are looking for higher end machines like the T or X series
Thinkpads.
IMO, the best place to purchase a lower end R series Thinkpad is India.
- Raja
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