Shipping (New) Electronics to the UK

If it's a Hackintosh, it should be a switched voltage power supply.  Regular Mac desktops also have the switch voltage (at least the G4 did).  I'm sure there's some places in the UK that make these as well.

I bought a desktop in the US and brought it home as carryon baggage since the tower was a slimline.

Did I save money? A little bit. Was it a huge hassle? YES!

Next time I will buy here in the UK. The savings just did not offset what I went through to get it home.

Your mileage may vary. 

Buy when you get to the UK. In terms relative to someone earning Pounds in the UK and someone earning dollars in the US, the prices are actually.....the same. A PC that costs say, $500 in the US, you will find marked in UK stores as, oddly enough, about £500 -- and to each respective citizen that will actually "feel" like the same value. It doesn't make sense in terms of the actual exchange rate, in which, yes, unfortunately your dollars converted to pounds will be lesser.

But I think, what with the hassle of extra baggage, duty to pay on a new item (and without outright lying there is no getting around the six month thing) you might as well just wait until you get here. There are GREAT prices, I just bought a really nice laptop for under £400, and over here that's the same value "in situ" as it would be in dollars over there. I am not at all finding electronics prices here to be high -- they are about the same relative to what I was used to seeing in the US. London, at least, is awash in great values and competitive pricing in the electronics stores especially if you shop around, no different to the US.

But I think, what with the hassle of extra baggage, duty to pay on a new item (and without outright lying there is no getting around the six month thing) you might as well just wait until you get here.

Another thought piggybacking on this, unless you're planning to hand-carry a desktop (as mentioned someone above), is that we were required to list serial/product numbers for our shipped electronics.  I'm not entirely sure this is true, but our movers said that an items serial number indicates when it was manufactured.  It was a non-issue for us, so I didn't check further, although I have no reason to doubt it.  For some brand-spanking-newly-released items, it's clear that it's not 6 months old.  But even for new purchases of non-bleeding edge items, you could get caught out. 

I know a lot of folks pack themselves, and could opt just not to list out the exact contents, but if you don't disclose the computer, you risk screwing yourself insurance-wise should something happen to your shipment en route. 

I suspect it's a level of risk with which some are comfortable and some are not. 

Yep; I don't think I'd bother risking being dishonest -- it's not as huge as deal as being dishonest with, oh, the IRS or Immigration, but still, they could cause hassle and a big drag for you if you get caught out trying to disregard import regulation details like this.

When shipping, in the contract there is usually small print that says your stuff can even be confiscated or delayed if discovered as not fully disclosed truthfully. They probably let stuff slip all the time, and it may not often go that far, but you might as well just fess up or wait to buy.

(Edited over and over because it seems to have become my new norm that I am just Typo City all the time now....)

That's strange...I've always built my computers, so there are no serial numbers on them... Our shipper (Contour Logistics) didn't ask for many details (most boxes were listed as computer, electronics, dvds, books, clothes, spices, OTC medicine, etc...all very generic).  This may have been partly because our stuff came over under my student visa as things for studies/living which we will be (theoretically) taking back with us when everything is over.  Also, we didn't have anything exotic like corpses, guns, depleted uranium, medieval torture devices, unidentified white powder, etc.  When we received our belongings (fifteen years later, or so it seemed), it didn't look like anyone had opened them (our horrible packaging/tape was the same), let alone looked at them.

well, I've looked around for hackintoshes in the UK and it's pretty hard to find.  The only place in europe I've seen was pretty expensive, and dell.co.uk is more expensive than dell.com
like impieri said, self-built computers dont have serials so that takes care of some things, and the other way to get around the 6-months, is buying used, which I am going to do for my "new" laptop, which will have a 2008 serial #...
still, in terms of the desktop, I cant seem to find anything remotely close to $700GBP

carry-on for the desktop sounds like a good idea in theory   I'm sure in practice it may not

thanks all for your help and advice!

I wouldn't know for certain as I've never shopped for one, but I'd be very surprised if a Mac could not be found in the UK, surely....

 To impleri:
As for shipping companies, well sure, my packages looked unopened too, and if I'd had any of your strange list of items, or even just a brand new computer in there, sure, it would have gone completely unnoticed by the customs and duty folks I suppose.

But it was in the contract small print and I like to heed warnings. Perhaps they randomly open and inspect more closely to some and not others, and both you and I were lucky, impleri? Who knows. And hell, who cares.


All I'm saying is, I wanted everything to go smoothly, so I wasn't about to lie and then have something go wrong with all my stuff. It's not that important in the big picutre but why try to be pettily deceitful? (this addressed to the OP)

I don't know for sure, but isn't the duty to be paid on an openly declared new purchase a pretty insignificant a percentage? Pay it or buy here. All this dodging around just to save a few bucks duty tax is ridiculous. If eveeyone tried to dodge like this, there would be a floodgate open to folks abusing it for the very reasons it was set up.

thanks for your comments and advice.. I'm guessing some of the comments were just advice in general and not directed at me, because I never talked about lying or deceiving, just about what's best and maybe how to find the easier ways to bring electronics w/ you...
I think its pretty clear to me that if your items are not new, even if recently acquired, then you shouldnt have to pay any extra customs etc...  and when you do then you do...

i still wanted to clarify that its not a mac that I was looking for, it's a PC that can run both microsoft or linux and mac software...  i'm sure you can find them in the UK, but how easy and econonic are they, I'm still not sure, but still looking around...

also, I already have a desktop/laptop, so I cant really just buy a new one there   but it seems that it may be better to upgrade my used items for less used items prior to the move,or according to some, it may not be worth it,    I appreciate the varying advice that helps form a full picture   thank you !!

Hi again NYStacey,

Just going from your requirement line - A PC that can run Microsoft Windows and/or Linux and/or MAC OSX.

Yes, you can get a PC to do the above, the intricacies are what kind of programs and applications you are likely to be wanting to run in each OS on the PC, their system requirements and any specific configuration issues/ limitations.

In a 'general nutshell' - to have a PC (or MAC) capable of doing the above with some decent level of performance you'll need some pretty hefty hardware. Setups like this are certainly much easier to do nowadays than say a few years ago, but still technically quite complex - if (and most likely when!) you get some glitch or issue or problem, you potentially got 2 or 3 times the complexity as you may need to investigate each other Operating system.

Economically, well going to my point above, depends really what you are needing this triple OS computer to be doing! and added to that, only you know how big your purse is !

If you'd like, message me on some of the above points as I do know some good PC suppliers, component suppliers etc and also software to help you do what you want to achieve.

for now, I'm thinking you must be some sort of space scientist or nuclear physicist or computer aided designer to want a powerful computer like this!

Cheers! DtM! West London & Slough UK!

for now, I'm thinking you must be some sort of space scientist or nuclear physicist or computer aided designer to want a powerful computer like this!

Lol - that's what I was thinking about when I read the above post about needing the PC/Mac/Linux setup .

I was a PhD research student in geophysics last year and I was doing all of my work on a Dell laptop with Cygwin installed (it was a bit of a nightmare though... I would have preferred to be working on a Mac) ! I decided to leave the PhD program early, but had I stayed for the entire duration, I would probably have eventually invested in a Mac and foregone Windows altogether... PCs and finite element modelling codes do not go well together at all  !

thank you DtM.... always the most helpful!

sorry, I'm not a space scientist nor really really good with computers,  but shh!

the hardest task I would ask the computer is to edit avchd, preferrably in final cut, therefore the need for mac os (and a quad core?).   Other than that, I just need firefox to chat with my friends at UKY and get the best ever help and advice around the web
I dont need triple OS, I was just saying it could...  I only need one, and just maybe two, but I'll likely do with one, though its nice to have options..

thanks for the useful information - I may bother you on some specifics, thanks always for your time !!