Might have something to do with figures rarely consisting of more than a few parts..

Well as far as I can surmise you get modellers, part fitters and painters............

Luckily I consider myself to be a modeller

Hey guys!

What are your thoughts on hobby shops in the Pretoria area?

Quintin

I used to shop at Jix in Pretoria (Tswane?) and they were good. I know the central branch has closed and all stock was moved to their Menlyn branch.

Hello All

My first contribution here, so bear with me! Jix in Pretoria are pretty good but I do most of my shopping over the net. Hobbylinc.com is an excellent online store and have a great range. They often have free shipping offers and I have never had a problem here. Bear a thought for the LHS in one respect: I have an import company (books only) which has been running for 4 years. A lot of their inconsistent pricing may be due to the extremely volotile exchange rate. This can be the only reason for variable pricing on the same product.

However, I agree with all of you on the poor service. Most of these stores leave much to be desired, but as I said for ' emergency stuff' Jix does the trick!

Cheers to all!
Garth

Hey Quintin,

Generally speaking, and to put it bluntly, out of all the Hobby Shops in the greater Pretoria area that I've visited, like Garth said (Welcome to Armorama, Garth), only Jix stands out. The rest, without trying to sound rude, need to take a few Public Relations courses to brush up on their people skills!

You guys are right about the prices being rediculous in South Africa. Ten years ago the very same kit's didn't even cost half of what they do now!

On a side note, I went to the Military Museum at Saxonwold for the Arms Fair that they hosted and walked into their Museum Shop and started browsing their books. One secondhand book, actually a novel, written by Sven Hassel stood up and caught my attention. It was priced at roughly R150.00 - I got the same book from a Secondhand Bookshop six months before the Fair for 50 cents!

Cougar

Hello.

I am new to the forum and I have the following questions

1)What import duties do we pay?
2)How reliable is our postal service?
3)How long would it sit in customs for?

Here are more details on my order
-Total value is about US$191 (about R1400) worth of plastic models stuff from Luckymodel.com, but I asked to them to declar a low value invoice
-Shipped using air mail (7-11 DAYS) from www.Luckmodel.com
-Order is just kits and tools (no solvent products, paints or liquids)
-I live in Joburg, South Africa

Hi Tekkies!

I can help with a few of your questions:

1. All imports from the USA usually come via the Virgin Islands. Shipping times from the USA vary but generally my stuff from Hobbylinc.com takes 2-3 weeks, from date of order to delivery.
2. Customs duties vary greatly (according to invoice value) but also depending on who wields the stamp!! Import duties on plastic kits could anything between 20-35 % and then VAT is added.
3. As to the reliability of SAPS, that is anybodies guess, but so far none of my goodies have gone missing!!.

Good luck and let us know if your parcel arrives. Hint : If you order invoice values lower that R 500.00, they sometimes evade duty!

Cheers
Garth

Howzit Lekkertekkies,

Firstly welcome to The Springbok Club

I have a fair amount of dealings with both SARS Customs and the PO through being on the receiving (and sometimes sending end) of model review samples. And they are not too bad - with stuff coming in...

SARS will charge you various stamp duties and VAT on the declared value of the goods. The way to get around this is to have it come in as a gift. Most on-line retailers won't do this either at all or with goods over a certain value - e.g. Colorado Miniatures in the US sent me a figure and some paints to the value of +- 75 USD and marked it as a gift, ModelsForSale in the UK sent me goods for a lesser value but as a corporate policy are not prepared to do this.

Generally SARS are pretty good though. If it is opened though for inspection and something is missing, there's pretty much buggerall you can do about it though Pravin has really jacked SARS up - in all departments!

When things go missing though tend to be on the PO side though. I send some samples to Spain and Turkey recently (via Air) and I suspect they have gone to someone's X-mas box...

LuckyModel are pretty good with their postage though, but if they tell you 7-11 working days, expect it to be closer to 14-21. Unfortunately you have to allow for a) Africa time, and b) beautocratic (sp?) time...

Hope that helps,

Tjers

Rudi

Lucky model and Post Office Rocks!!!

Just got my collection yesterday.

It consisted of the following
-Academy 1/32 F-16 CJ
-Hobby decal stencils set 4 for Academy F-16
-Hasegawa 1/72 F-14D Blacklions Last cruise
-Dragon 1/35 King Tiger Premium Porsche turret (Aluminium barrel)
-Hasegawa 1/72 Weapons set - Special bombs and nav/ targeting pods
-Hasegawa trytool scribing template set
-Tamiya straight tweezers
-Tamiya angled tweezers

Total order value was about US$191 (about R1400), but it was declared as US$36
Customs charges were only R30
Time from order placement to delivery was about 2 weeks
Nothing was missing or damaged
If I bought the items seperately here in SA, it would probably be a whole lot more

I will definately order from these guys again





I now have very little reason to go to local hobby shops