Beginner Is it a ""Grey import"" how do you find out ? (Help required please)

Coho-Blue

Coho-Blue

Messages
422
Name
Harry
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi All

As per the title ,, how can you tell if a Camera body (or lens for that matter) is a Grey import ?

EDIT -EDIT - EDIT

Rather that start another long debate on the reasons for/against Grey products and more importantly the possibility of Ruffling someone`s feathers, I have decided to edit the Thread after finding lots of very good info in the Archives on this very subject ... @ Moderators ... you may Lock the thread if you wish

Also I`d like to add - Thank you > @ Jeff15 for your input ,,its not that I was bothered about buying the Camera on the possibility of it being a Grey import but rather the Seller was asking close to the same price as it would cost me to buy it Brand New GREY ( I only found that out when I checked what they were selling for) and given that he was asking that high price thats when I asked was it a UK product ......


Coho-Blue
 
Last edited:
Over the years I have bought some grey import cameras and lenses. If it's all in the condition as described it really does not matter much. It's not as if there were any product guarantees to worry about.
 
Thank you @ Jeff15 ... looks like I`m going to find a reputable Grey dealer and at least get a warranty ;)



Coho-Blue
 
Coho-Blue said:
its not that I was bothered about buying the Camera on the possibility of it being a Grey import but rather the Seller was asking close to the same price as it would cost me to buy it Brand New GREY ( I only found that out when I checked what they were selling for) and given that he was asking that high price thats when I asked was it a UK product ......
Click to expand...

And was it UK? Or was it Grey? Or did the person not know? Or did they know it was Grey but didn't want to admit it? ........So many questions with so many possible answers given.

I guess it's one of those situations where you go with your gut feeling or just do what you feel is 'right' :)
 
LeeRatters said:
And was it UK? Or was it Grey? Or did the person not know? Or did they know it was Grey but didn't want to admit it? ........So many questions with so many possible answers given.

I guess it's one of those situations where you go with your gut feeling or just do what you feel is 'right' :)
Click to expand...


Thats the very reason I came here Lee ,to find out if there is a way to tell or not , by looking at the camera ..

When I knew how much he was asking for it which was £1,800 - I then went to Google to check on how much they fetched in used condition ,, as it turns out a Brand New D850 is somewhere in the region of £2,500 from Jessops and Wex Camera - both UK Products

However a Brand New "Grey" Nikon D850 from Panamoz is £1,980 and from e-infinity uk its £1,880 so a Saving of between 500/600 GBP

Going on that basis one would therefore expect a USED grey import with less than 8k shots to be cheaper than a USED uk product with less than 8k shots - hence I asked him the question "Was it a UK camera or a Grey import camera" ... He didn`t know and asked me how would he be able to tell and thats when I came here to find out..

Anyways to conclude - My reasoning was , why would I give him £1,800 If its a grey import when I can buy a brand new grey import for around the same money Plus I would get at least a Years Warranty and in fact 3 years warranty with Panamoz ... I could see his reasoning if he`d paid good money for a UK product and he was taking a hit of 5 or 6 hundred ££`s on the price ..

its all a lot of ,,If`s , But`s , maybe`s and who knows .... So my gut now tells me ( with the help from you guys on here ) to buy a BNIB Grey Camera and it`ll be smiles all round :D :D ...



Coho-Blue
 
Last edited:
I think this clearly shows the discrepancy in global pricing by manufacturers. Many years ago I worked in a camera shop (back in the 80’s) and the margins on new hardware was terrible - around the 17-20% mark from the big names, a bit more from others. Where the shop made money was fast turnover items like D&P, batteries, film etc. Those 3 items don’t exist so much these days. If a firm can buy a D850 in Hong Kong or wherever, ship it over here, lose the PayPal fee on the card transaction and sell it for less then the UK shops are paying Nikon UK for it then it’s about time someone fessed up to the ongoing rip off. Even allowing for import duty, currency fluctuations etc there are some seriously big pricing discrepancies going on. And the manufacturers have only themselves to blame.
 
Andrew Smith said:
I think this clearly shows the discrepancy in global pricing by manufacturers. Many years ago I worked in a camera shop (back in the 80’s) and the margins on new hardware was terrible - around the 17-20% mark from the big names, a bit more from others. Where the shop made money was fast turnover items like D&P, batteries, film etc. Those 3 items don’t exist so much these days. If a firm can buy a D850 in Hong Kong or wherever, ship it over here, lose the PayPal fee on the card transaction and sell it for less then the UK shops are paying Nikon UK for it then it’s about time someone fessed up to the ongoing rip off. Even allowing for import duty, currency fluctuations etc there are some seriously big pricing discrepancies going on. And the manufacturers have only themselves to blame.
Click to expand...
The Panamoz price would only be about 5% below the UK price if they were paying VAT.
 
Coho-Blue said:
Thats the very reason I came here Lee ,to find out if there is a way to tell or not , by looking at the camera ..

When I knew how much he was asking for it which was £1,800 - I then went to Google to check on how much they fetched in used condition ,, as it turns out a Brand New D850 is somewhere in the region of £2,500 from Jessops and Wex Camera - both UK Products

However a Brand New "Grey" Nikon D850 from Panamoz is £1,980 and from e-infinity uk its £1,880 so a Saving of between 500/600 GBP

Going on that basis one would therefore expect a USED grey import with less than 8k shots to be cheaper than a USED uk product with less than 8k shots - hence I asked him the question "Was it a UK camera or a Grey import camera" ... He didn`t know and asked me how would he be able to tell and thats when I came here to find out..

Anyways to conclude - My reasoning was , why would I give him £1,800 If its a grey import when I can buy a brand new grey import for around the same money Plus I would get at least a Years Warranty and in fact 3 years warranty with Panamoz ... I could see his reasoning if he`d paid good money for a UK product and he was taking a hit of 5 or 6 hundred ££`s on the price ..

its all a lot of ,,If`s , But`s , maybe`s and who knows .... So my gut now tells me ( with the help from you guys on here ) to buy a BNIB Grey Camera and it`ll be smiles all round :D :D ...



Coho-Blue
Click to expand...
Why would you expect a S/H grey import to be cheaper than a S/H regular import? - they are the same camera.
The saving was made by the original purchaser, why should they pass it on to you? If you want to save then buy a new grey import.
There is absolutely NO difference between a camera that is a grey import compared to one that is a "genuine" import - they both come from the same factory.
 
Retune said:
The Panamoz price would only be about 5% below the UK price if they were paying VAT.
Click to expand...
Do you have evidence that Panamoz are committing VAT fraud in the UK? They rent office space in the Regus in Brighton, have British staff answering the phone and a UK warehouse.

They seem to be shipping from the UK so are you saying they are smuggling the gear in via fake customs documents or in 1’s and 2’s via the post?
 
I imagine it would be a simple matter to get a receipt that itemises the VAT paid then, like I do every time I buy a sandwich at Pret. Perhaps someone who has purchased from them could ask? There'd be no reason not to provide one if the VAT has indeed been paid in full, and it would end all speculation about taxation on products consistently sold for around 20% less than official UK imports by companies registered in Hong Kong. And if it happened that the VAT had not yet been paid and was in fact the responsibility of the purchaser, who for the purposes of taxation was the official importer, I expect the buyer would be pleased to have this clarified.
 
Try selling it to MPB - they would not accept one of my lenses as it was flagged on their system as a grey import.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Try selling it to MPB - they would not accept one of my lenses as it was flagged on their system as a grey import.
Click to expand...

It may have been that there were overstocked with that item and needed a reason to say no? Most of my kit has been bought "grey" over the years and I sold all my Canon kit to MPB - no questions asked.

I always add this point to any debate about grey imports. There appears to be some kind of price fixing going on within all the mainstream importers / dealers for most popular gear. You only have to look at Camera Price Buster to see that this is the case. If the importers allowed proper price competition (which would benefit the end user) the grey dealers would have a lot more difficulty staying in business.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Try selling it to MPB - they would not accept one of my lenses as it was flagged on their system as a grey import.
Click to expand...
So how would they know it’s a grey import? Do MPB have have access to every Nikon serial number in the world and details of which country it was sent to from the factory? I think this is unlikely. Greys of Westminster bought some of my 35mm film Nikon’s one of which had been bought in the Far East Without question.
 
Brian G said:
Why would you expect a S/H grey import to be cheaper than a S/H regular import? - they are the same camera.
The saving was made by the original purchaser, why should they pass it on to you? If you want to save then buy a new grey import.
There is absolutely NO difference between a camera that is a grey import compared to one that is a "genuine" import - they both come from the same factory.
Click to expand...

Because in 99% of grey imports the item hasn't has VAT paid on it and therefore should be at least 20% less than those sold in the UK.
 
How do I know?

The wording of most importer's terms and conditions. Frequent posts on here and evidence elsewhere in general.

The practice is well recognized. Unless you happen to be a member of the Struthio Camelus family.
 
DemiLion said:
How do I know?

The wording of most importer's terms and conditions. Frequent posts on here and evidence elsewhere in general.

The practice is well recognized. Unless you happen to be a member of the Struthio Camelus family.
Click to expand...
T and C’s mean nothing. Ever read the T and C’s when you buy a train ticket? Do you have any hard evidence of how this smuggling is taking place? Panamoz ship from a UK warehouse (as do others) and offer a lot of stock. So, they are either shipping it to order from Hong Kong of wherever to the UK or they are bringing it in via bulk shipments. With all these regular shipments coming in if there is VAT fraud going on surely HMRC would have spotted the patterns by now and investigated it? If they are shipping kit by the pallet how are they avoiding customs at the port of entry?

And they have to be turning a profit so this still comes back to price discrepancy between countries. If Nikon were bothered about this they would shut down the supply routes to Panamoz etc.

They haven’t.

And if I was buying a new D850 I couldn’t ignore the £600 difference between E-Infinity and the UK retail pricing.
 
Andrew Smith said:
So how would they know it’s a grey import? Do MPB have have access to every Nikon serial number in the world and details of which country it was sent to from the factory? I think this is unlikely. Greys of Westminster bought some of my 35mm film Nikon’s one of which had been bought in the Far East Without question.
Click to expand...
Canon have a serial number checker on their website - albeit whether due to age or something else none of the few i’ve tried have produced a result.
 
Andrew Smith said:
T and C’s mean nothing. Ever read the T and C’s when you buy a train ticket? Do you have any hard evidence of how this smuggling is taking place? Panamoz ship from a UK warehouse (as do others) and offer a lot of stock. So, they are either shipping it to order from Hong Kong of wherever to the UK or they are bringing it in via bulk shipments. With all these regular shipments coming in if there is VAT fraud going on surely HMRC would have spotted the patterns by now and investigated it? If they are shipping kit by the pallet how are they avoiding customs at the port of entry?

And they have to be turning a profit so this still comes back to price discrepancy between countries. If Nikon were bothered about this they would shut down the supply routes to Panamoz etc.

They haven’t.

And if I was buying a new D850 I couldn’t ignore the £600 difference between E-Infinity and the UK retail pricing.
Click to expand...
I have never had anything from Panamoz ship from the UK.
 
robj20 said:
I have never had anything from Panamoz ship from the UK.
Click to expand...

Neither have I - always from Hong Kong but with UK chargers, English manual and the camera default language in English.

What clinches it is the 3yr warranty deal with them - I too am looking at a D850 for my 70-200 2.8 and toying between e-infin and Panamoz, Panamoz are £100 more but 2yrs more warranty and I've found them amazing in the past.
 
SFTPhotography said:
Neither have I - always from Hong Kong but with UK chargers, English manual and the camera default language in English.

What clinches it is the 3yr warranty deal with them - I too am looking at a D850 for my 70-200 2.8 and toying between e-infin and Panamoz, Panamoz are £100 more but 2yrs more warranty and I've found them amazing in the past.
Click to expand...
Panamoz will match E-infinity prices. Panamoz have better service, compare their terms and conditions for the warranty is not just the 3 years that's worth it.
 
SFTPhotography said:
Thanks for letting me know - think I'll flog my D810's and use the money to get this D850
Click to expand...
E-infinity
"customers will need to bear the postage for returning the product back to us and we will cover the costs for shipping the product back to you after service. Repair normally takes about 3 to 10 weeks depending on the issues and we will be keeping you informed during the process. In case the repair requires a part that needs to be specially ordered from the manufacturer, additional costs may incur and we will let you know as soon as possible"

Panamoz
"Please contact us by email with your order number, full name, and also details of the fault. We will provide you with the authorisation to go forward and also information on our authorised repair shops near you. To claim back any cost you have accumulated, please send us the relevent invoices. We will reimburse you the full amount by either bank transfer or PayPal."
 
Andrew Smith said:
T and C’s mean nothing. Ever read the T and C’s when you buy a train ticket? Do you have any hard evidence of how this smuggling is taking place? Panamoz ship from a UK warehouse (as do others) and offer a lot of stock. So, they are either shipping it to order from Hong Kong of wherever to the UK or they are bringing it in via bulk shipments. With all these regular shipments coming in if there is VAT fraud going on surely HMRC would have spotted the patterns by now and investigated it? If they are shipping kit by the pallet how are they avoiding customs at the port of entry?

And they have to be turning a profit so this still comes back to price discrepancy between countries. If Nikon were bothered about this they would shut down the supply routes to Panamoz etc.

They haven’t.

And if I was buying a new D850 I couldn’t ignore the £600 difference between E-Infinity and the UK retail pricing.
Click to expand...
As above, if these companies are indeed paying VAT, it ought to be a simple matter to get them to issue a VAT receipt. Panomoz, who are registered in HK (which does not have VAT) and note in their T&Cs that HK law governs all puchases, say they are 'not a VAT company' and therefore cannot provide VAT invoices. But perhaps they can provide some other evidence that VAT has been paid on import, e.g. if you need to reclaim it? Again, this should be perfectly straightforward if VAT has actually been paid. Previous posters have asked various HK companies about this, but haven't managed to get VAT receipts. If you've purchased anything from them before, perhaps you could give it a go and let us know how they respond?
 
DemiLion said:
How do I know?

The wording of most importer's terms and conditions. Frequent posts on here and evidence elsewhere in general.
Click to expand...

You mean that you're speculating based on hearsay (frequent posts here) and interpretation of the Ts & Cs.

The 'grey market' threads invariably break down this way with posters taking opposing positions. Grey market doesn't necessarily mean that VAT and duties have not been paid. And prce discrepancies (deliberate or inadvertent) do occur between markets. If the price differences beween UK discounted supplier and grey market are greater than the VAT difference then that would tend to suggest that the manufacturer or their distributor are charging more in the UK market.

There is also the issue of kit splitting which confuses prices a bit more. Some UK retailers do that with official UK stock - and it may well be that some grey suppliers do the same. It has not been uncommon on eBay to see some cheaper kit type lenses on offer as new where there seems to be a large supply - so maybe some bulk kit splitting going on ( I recall a few years ago that the Panasonic 35-100 F4-F5.6 was commonly available at about half the normal UK retail price, and that the Fuji 27mm F2.8 used to be available cheaply on eBay and Amazon).
 
Grey market doesn't need to involve tax evasion, and there may well be underlying differences in pricing that have nothing to do with VAT (it's certainly possible to find cameras where the UK price is much more than 120% of the grey price). It's just that an awful lot of items coming in from HK, which doesn't have VAT, have a price difference that's comparable to VAT. I have plenty of receipts from UK dealers that itemise the VAT paid. Can anyone who has used one of the HK grey market dealers say the same for any camera they have purchased?

A cynic might speculate that what the grey market dealers are really selling is plausible deniability (a buyer can claim, sincerely or otherwise, that they thought all required taxes have been paid), and 'tax insurance' (these dealers usually have carefully phrased statements that effectively mean they will cover all tax that is demanded if an item is stopped, but not necessarily all tax that is required; some make it explicit in the small print that the buyer is the official importer, and therefore formally liable for any tax bill even if the dealer pays up in practice).

VAT evasion is thought to be so widespread that the EU is switching to a system where VAT to be dealt with properly in the country of origin for all imports from third countries - the effects of our own attempt to copy this at a national level have been discussed in a couple of recent threads.
 
robj20 said:
E-infinity
"customers will need to bear the postage for returning the product back to us and we will cover the costs for shipping the product back to you after service. Repair normally takes about 3 to 10 weeks depending on the issues and we will be keeping you informed during the process. In case the repair requires a part that needs to be specially ordered from the manufacturer, additional costs may incur and we will let you know as soon as possible"

Panamoz
"Please contact us by email with your order number, full name, and also details of the fault. We will provide you with the authorisation to go forward and also information on our authorised repair shops near you. To claim back any cost you have accumulated, please send us the relevent invoices. We will reimburse you the full amount by either bank transfer or PayPal."
Click to expand...

Panamoz are good for there warranty too.
My LCD screen went faulty on my D500 they said send it to Nikon uk and they would cover all costs.
It cost about £200 and they paid straight up and i got warranty on the repair from nikon uk too :)
 
Dryce said:
There is also the issue of kit splitting which confuses prices a bit more. Some UK retailers do that with official UK stock - and it may well be that some grey suppliers do the same. It has not been uncommon on eBay to see some cheaper kit type lenses on offer as new where there seems to be a large supply - so maybe some bulk kit splitting going on ( I recall a few years ago that the Panasonic 35-100 F4-F5.6 was commonly available at about half the normal UK retail price, and that the Fuji 27mm F2.8 used to be available cheaply on eBay and Amazon).
Click to expand...

I'm new to this, but it is very hard to work out what on earth is going on. I'm (im)patiently waiting for a nikon lens from e-infinity. A 24-70, which is a kit lens with the z6. It is for sale in WEX at £899 and from e-infinity for £399. That is an astonishing difference, and I fully expected to get a kit lens which had been split out. However e-infinity have sent me a photo of the package and my shipping slip, and it shows a retail box.
 
Brian G said:
Why would you expect a S/H grey import to be cheaper than a S/H regular import? - they are the same camera.
The saving was made by the original purchaser, why should they pass it on to you? If you want to save then buy a new grey import.
There is absolutely NO difference between a camera that is a grey import compared to one that is a "genuine" import - they both come from the same factory.
Click to expand...

Not true. The grey import has no UK manufacturer warranty and must be officially serviced/repaired within the region it was intended for.
 
Nebulous said:
I'm new to this, but it is very hard to work out what on earth is going on. I'm (im)patiently waiting for a nikon lens from e-infinity. A 24-70, which is a kit lens with the z6. It is for sale in WEX at £899 and from e-infinity for £399. That is an astonishing difference, and I fully expected to get a kit lens which had been split out. However e-infinity have sent me a photo of the package and my shipping slip, and it shows a retail box.
Click to expand...

Well that sort of price difference tends to undermine the argument that grey market prices only differ because of VAT and duty.

This situation isn't new or confined to the UK.

So what is going on is simply that on occasion local distributors or representatives will charge a significantly different price in one market or another based upon what they think the market will bear.
 
THIRTYFIVEMILL said:
Not true. The grey import has no UK manufacturer warranty and must be officially serviced/repaired within the region it was intended for.
Click to expand...

That's not entirely true in that it is not a universal rule.

The situation is that some local distributors or manufacturers' representatives may try and cynically protect their margins by doing this. But not all.
 
I used to import goods into the UK from China, Hong Kong, Poland, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India in order to sell them to UK wholesalers and retailers.

In all cases there were recommended prices for me to charge the wholesalers and a RRP for them (and me) to sell on to the public. Some manufacturer's were really hot on this and would threaten to stop dealing with my company if these were not followed. Others didn't care providing they'd made a sale and it was up to me on what profit I made. In some cases as much as 1500% was available to play with, but in a lot of cases no more than about 100%.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top