Originally posted by clockworkrat 
The thing with buying in from abroad is import tax, which is high enough to bump me over budget.
The flipside of this can occur when local distributors either don't stock or stock at relatively exorbitant prices. Living as I do on a large island off the Atlantic coast of Canada, I found that even with import taxes and the exchange rate as it was then (worse now), the cost of a high-end flash and a bunch of limiteds from B&H was as cheap as or potentially cheaper than anything I could find on my own side of the border. And even at the price of a few dollars more, the ability to buy the whole lot online from ONE reputable seller with solid bricks and mortar presence, who had everything I wanted in time for St Nick's most recent visit, was worth the extra expense.
Some of us, of course, are not so lucky - I am no longer that lucky, after what the $CDN has recently done and might do more of - but there is always that worry about what will happen with duties, postage, etc. when all the buttons are clicked or when the final e-bay bid is made and the "purchase price" on which those duties are calculated is finalised.
It is why I am loath to bid outside my own borders, if I go down that route. At what price is the customs agent in an office in Toronto or Vancouver or wherever going to bring the hammer down and impose a duty on my bargain secondhand lens that wipes out all the savings I made with my painstaking auction-stalking of much-desired stuff? Even in the Marketplace here, for example, some lenses from American sellers are bargains - but only to other Americans, who don't get their wallets excessively dug into by customs and transport costs whenever something crosses that invisible line on the map.
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