To buy or not to buy, that is the question...

HI
i am currently in Japan for a few days on business from the UK and went to Sofmap in Akihabara,Tokyo.
they sell numerous secondhand Apple products and the following caught my eye:

MacBook Air 2.0ghz core i7 / 13.3" MD846J/A
8Gb RAM
512 SSD

Believe is a 2012 model with a US keyboard running OS X 10.8.5

I can buy this for £800 tax free from them but I could not really find much on this model listed to check if this was a good price or not.

The spec appears good, as I wanted to run things like VMWare fusion.

Any advice would be appreciated and if this is too much of a risk to bring back to the UK.

Thanks in advance

David

Da51her said:

I can buy this for £800 tax free from them but I could not really find much on this model listed to check if this was a good price or not.

Any advice would be appreciated and if this is too much of a risk to bring back to the UK.

Click to expand...

I think that if you were going to be 100% legal. Since this computer would have been purchased while traveling outside the UK…that technically you would have to declare it when reentering the UK. If this is done…I think that you would have to pay VAT…which I believe is about 20%.

- Nick

Do not know about UK, but last time I went to Singapore, Aussie customs stuck a special tag on my laptop to show it was not purchased overseas otherwise the 10% GST (VAT) would have applied on return I am told.

US customs does the same thing Harry. When you leave the US with high value items like cameras and notebooks, you must register the serial numbers with them so that when you return they can be declared as returned US purchases. I did that quite often when I was working in Hawaii and had to travel to Japan and back. US customs entering Hawaii are real stickers.

Indeed Charlie even in the middle of the night they are on the ball at the Honululu International Airport.

Funny thing a Qantas Flight out of H.I.A. to Sydney departs at 12.05am, and is the most missed flight world wide. Folk think there plane goes tomorrow night, not just after midnight tonight!