Importing a gtx 970 from Amazon or buying it locally?

C

Crackajackblack

New member
Hi Everyone

My current graphics card, an Asus gtx 460, has reached the end of its life and I am looking at getting a gtx 970 to replace it. After conducting some research, which I will give details of below, I am now at a crossroads of whether to buy the card locally or import it from amazon. I was wondering if anyone has any advice on importing a GPU from amazon, I am specifically concerned about the warranty and how this would work. Is it worth importing a card and saving about R1000 or just buying it locally and having the safety of a local warranty? I will outline what I have uncovered so far below:

Firstly if I am going to go with the local option I will probably go for the MSI gamer edition. I can find a retail price of R5799, which is the cheapest I have come across.

Amazon does not import that MSI card but seems to import the Gigabyte and the Asus versions of the cards. Using a duty calculator website I have found that the Asus card will cost me round about R4750 and the Gigabyte will be R4910. (this is after all costs are incurred, shipping and VAT)

I am not fussed about which manufactures card I get as I trust all three companies in terms of build quality. I know that the Gigabyte card seems to be regarded as the better option in terms of OC'ing. I am also aware that Asus tends to not have the greatest customer service when it comes to issues with their products, and that the MSI card seems to have the best tweaking software.

This leads me to my dilemma. Is it worth getting the local MSI card for an extra R1000 for the local warranty or importing lets say the Asus card and saving the R1000? The card would be coming from Amazon, and while I have bought products from them before I have never had to return a product. I am also not sure if Amazon covers the cost of return shipping or not. I know on their website they seem to imply they do but I have no personal experience with this and was hoping that other members might.

Ultimately I don't want to end up in a situation where I spend more than the R1000 I can save on returning a faulty product and waiting for months before I might get it back. The gamer side of my brain is just screaming at me to go with the MSI card locally so I can get back to actually playing games but my rational cost-saving brain is saying import it and wait.

Any advice on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
 
I could be mistaken, but I think Amazon doesn't ship things like GPUs directly to SA, so you'll need to use a parcel forwarding service. The problem comes in that Amazon would then be within their rights to refuse to honour the warranty if something goes wrong. It will be a bit of a gamble on your side and personally I won't take the chance but with such a large price difference I do see the attraction.
 
You can spend up to R800 just sending a package back to the US, on top of that there is the wait time...anything from 7 days to 3-4 weeks.
I don't get why you would want to import in the 1st place, its like people think the local Etailers are making a huge profit on the items they sell, I know the profit margins for some of the biggest online shops in SA and I promise you its low.

You can buy a GTX970 Gaming from Rebeltech for around R5800, you'll get full local warranty, some of the best after sales support in the industry, you're able to have your card swapped when you need it done, you can speak to sales staff during our countries business hours...I can carry on ;)
 
Thanks for the replies :o

I have always ordered products locally as I prefer having the local support and I trust the Etailers of SA. The only products I have gotten imported are ones that have been unavailable here for various reasons. For example I ordered my Roccat mouse awhile back when Roccat was having issues with local supply. I ended up paying about R100 more than what I would have paid had there been supply locally.

I was just confused on the rather large price difference between the local price and US price and just wanted some more perspective.

I think I will order the MSI card tomorrow and be comforted by the local support that's available. I don't want to take a gamble with such a valuable piece of hardware.

I also think that having to wait would greatly annoy the gamer in me ;). Thanks again.
 
Crackajackblack said:
Thanks for the replies :o

I have always ordered products locally as I prefer having the local support and I trust the Etailers of SA. The only products I have gotten imported are ones that have been unavailable here for various reasons. For example I ordered my Roccat mouse awhile back when Roccat was having issues with local supply. I ended up paying about R100 more than what I would have paid had there been supply locally.

I was just confused on the rather large price difference between the local price and US price and just wanted some more perspective.

I think I will order the MSI card tomorrow and be comforted by the local support that's available. I don't want to take a gamble with such a valuable piece of hardware.

I also think that having to wait would greatly annoy the gamer in me ;). Thanks again.
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Glad we could help.
I used to import quite often and the trouble isn't worth the savings.
 
i am in pretty much the same boat. also considered the import route, thanks to the seemingly favorable pricing, but in the end i figure it's not worth the hassle.

i saw that Evetech had it for 5,799 but price has now jumped to R5,999 :( Rebeltech is R5,979. Anybody seen this MSI available cheaper anywhere else ?
 
Wyzak said:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=geforce+gtx+970
https://www.google.co.za/search?q=3....57j62l3j60l2.1875j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Somehow R3632 becomes R5800, a 60% markup. OP, I'm in the same boat as you, try and wait a few more months for the prices to settle. They always rape early-adopters.
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If only it worked like that lol
You guys have no idea.

1st off these cards get brought in at around R11.40 to the Dollar. Then there is the shipping costs and custom clearance, only then are the card at the suppliers, they add a 8% mark up. Then the card get delivered to Etailers/retailers at this point you're already looking at around R5400 before Etailers/Retailers add their own mark up.

I deal with this stuff on a daily basis.

Also Places like Amazon and NewEgg don't go through suppliers, they get their cards directly from Evga,Msi ect.
In SA we don't have this luxury, our PC hardware sales over the course of a year is equal to what NewEgg makes in a couple of weeks.

Its always been like this.
 
I did a quick comparison on the price of a local distributor versus Amazon, and the average price difference on the Nvidia cards is 34%, the minimum is only 7% on the GTX 650 and the maximum is 66% on the GTX 780 OC (although I searched for any 780 OC and not the exact same card, if I chose the exact same card the difference would be a lot smaller).

Interestingly the Geforce GTX 770 is selling at $359, which is $29 more than the 970, and it's rand equivalent is only R5653, so following that logic the 970 should be around R5200-5300. Which is still R500 less than the current price.
 
Wyzak said:
I did a quick comparison on the price of a local distributor versus Amazon, and the average price difference on the Nvidia cards is 34%, the minimum is only 7% on the GTX 650 and the maximum is 66% on the GTX 780 OC (although I searched for any 780 OC and not the exact same card, if I chose the exact same card the difference would be a lot smaller).

Interestingly the Geforce GTX 770 is selling at $359, which is $29 more than the 970, and it's rand equivalent is only R5653, so following that logic the 970 should be around R5200-5300. Which is still R500 less than the current price.
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You are also comparing cards that have been available for ages to brand new cards that have been available for less than 3 weeks.

Well you can't compare apples with oranges, like I said we are a completely different market.
Let me put it to you this way, In January this year one of the major gpu and motherboard players in SA were thinking of pulling out of the country because its just not profitable to sell their products here.

If you want to compare prices, you should compare Aus and SA, they have a small PC hardware market (Much bigger than ours but still tiny compared to the US or Europe). Then you'll see our pricing is spot on.

Edit: When I have a bit of time, I'll do the exact math so you can see what I'm on about.
 
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The Joker said:
You are also comparing cards that have been available for ages to brand new cards that have been available for less than 3 weeks.
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Why should that make any difference if the mark-up is a fixed 8% and then the cost of importing the item which doesn't care if it's a brand new item or a 20 year old item?

If anything the price on Amazon will drop going forward, so ours should to. Crap exchange rate aside.
 
Wyzak said:
Why should that make any difference if the mark-up is a fixed 8% and then the cost of importing the item which doesn't care if it's a brand new item or a 20 year old item?

If anything the price on Amazon will drop going forward, so ours should to. Crap exchange rate aside.
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Nvidia cards generally don't drop in pricing, they tend to go EOL and the remaining stock gets sent back.
The last local Nvidia sale I know of was on the MSI GTX770's, they sold them at R3999 (Suppliers didn't even break even on these).

Also you really should import a gpu yourself, and see how much fun it is when it comes to sending it back for rma to the US or EU.
I've done this, cost me R800 in shipping and I was without the card for 3 weeks, not fun...On top of that there is the fantastic customs officials that charge you whatever the hell they want. So you can end up paying R600 or R2500, its almost never the same.

That's why you pay R5900 for a card that costs $369.
You don't have to deal with things like customs.
You don't have to worry about warranty issues.
You don't have to pay any hidden charges.
You get you're hardware within a day or 2 of ordering.
You don't take any risks.

Like I said, I know the exact mark up figures (As in to the last cent) and I'm telling you the guys that think the retailers are making a fat profit on these cards have no idea how the PC hardware market in SA is run.
 
The Joker said:
Nvidia cards generally don't drop in pricing, they tend to go EOL and the remaining stock gets sent back.
The last local Nvidia sale I know of was on the MSI GTX770's, they sold them at R3999 (Suppliers didn't even break even on these).

Also you really should import a gpu yourself, and see how much fun it is when it comes to sending it back for rma to the US or EU.
I've done this, cost me R800 in shipping and I was without the card for 3 weeks, not fun...On top of that there is the fantastic customs officials that charge you whatever the hell they want. So you can end up paying R600 or R2500, its almost never the same.

That's why you pay R5900 for a card that costs $369.
You don't have to deal with things like customs.
You don't have to worry about warranty issues.
You don't have to pay any hidden charges.
You get you're hardware within a day or 2 of ordering.
You don't take any risks.

Like I said, I know the exact mark up figures (As in to the last cent) and I'm telling you the guys that think the retailers are making a fat profit on these cards have no idea how the PC hardware market in SA is run.
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Fair enough, but I still haven't seen anything that will explain why a card that costs $330 should retail for almost R500 more than a card that costs $360? Other than the customary rape of early adopters.
 
Wyzak said:
Fair enough, but I still haven't seen anything that will explain why a card that costs $330 should retail for almost R500 more than a card that costs $360? Other than the customary rape of early adopters.
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I believe it's called economics, specifically supply and demand curves. As demand decreases over time so does the prices thus ensuring stable production as well as consistent sales.
 
Ike_009 said:
I believe it's called economics, specifically supply and demand curves. As demand decreases over time so does the prices thus ensuring stable production as well as consistent sales.
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That has already been taken into account in the $330 pricing of Amazon.
 
The other thing of course to take into account is that the $330 is the end-user price on Amazon, which already includes all of their shipment and sourcing costs and their profit.

One would expect that our local distributors don't buy their products from Amazon or for $330, and actually get the products for less than that...
 
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