Right-Angled Bliss!

Three cheers for the customs officials and their extended tea-breaks!

Shane. Just say the customs stopped you coming through with those binos. Couldn't you just say that you brought them with you on the outward journey of your hols? How could they prove you didnt? Just curious.

Dave, the customs issue seems to be the source of a lot of speculation and hearsay. As far as I'm aware, had I been stopped by customs officials in possession of materials worth more than 175 euro I would have had to pay 25% of their value in duty. Thankfully (being aware that this is a public site), I didn't have materials of that value. This seems to be one of those areas where the burden of proof is on the part of the accused rather than the accuser, and apparently customs have the right to confiscate materials without any grounds for appeal.
Possible Urban Legend no.1; A person of my acquaintance has told me of a customs official who confiscates to order. Want a camera? He'll get you one. Don't know if it's true, but I hope it's not.
Possible Urban Legend no.2: I've heard as well that it's actually illegal to carry materials worth more than $500 out of the US. This is from a guy who knows a guy who had a set of golf clubs withheld on his way out of a US airport.
I guess we won't really know the truth of it until someone here gets stopped and 'processed'.

Keith, Mick; The Apogees come with two pairs of eyepieces giving 20x and 32x. The field of view is approximately 3 degrees and 1.5 degrees respectively. The eyepieces are unique and can only be used with these binoculars; similarly only these eyepieces can be used with these binos. It's one of those trade-offs I guess. The eyepieces have very short barrels, but with very generous eye-relief. I'll be more than happy to give ye a go of the binos at COSMOS. Mick; you're always welcome in my backyard on a clear night. If you're coming then bring along your 300D and you can help me make sense of my Digital Rebel and it's astrophoto potential! By the way they didn't have that Televue 125 you were looking for in stock, so I brought you back a copy of Sky News instead. Hope that's a fair trade-off!

TV125 Vs Sky News...hmmm... let me think about that one.

Shane

from what I've read, the whole excise/duty question is quite hard to unravel. I have read that stuff you bring back for yourself is limited to something like 20 or 25 Euro. If you are bringing back a gift from someone in the US, the limit is something like 170 odd quid. If what you are bringing back is more than this, you are liable for 4.2% duty (I think that applies to the value above the cut-off limits) and then another 21% VAT on the whole lot (around 25% all in). The 4.2% applies to all telescope equipment including mounts etc (TARIC code 900590).

Urban legend number 2 is probably incorrect. I'm due to ship stuff from the US work a lot more than 500 dollars! There may be a rule on what you can personally bring on the plane but if you ship it, I think the limit is something lilke 50000 Euro for telescope equipment. But then if you read the duty rules, it gets very complicated with exceptions, derogations and god knows what else.

I'd sincerely hope urban legend 1 is incorrect - if I was stopped, I'd be asking Customs for a receipt - I'm sure there'd be paperwork to take away with you anyway if you couldn;t pay the duty/VAT there and then. Assuming of course you could persuade Customs that it was a genuine mistake. If you couldn't, then I suppose you'd lose your stuff. What Cutoms do with it then, I'm not sure. They might donate it to charity, auction it or something else.

By the way, I've done the calculations on shipping stuff from the US to Ireland and to be honest, at least with the Euro v the dollar at the mo, its not worth going over to pick stuff up. By my reckoning, at a Euro/dollar rate of 1.3, add on 12% to the dollar value and that's what you'll pay in Euro including shipping, insurance, duty and VAT. So, if you buy a telescope for 1000 dollars, prepare to pay 1120 euro all in.

Actually, it would be worth looking at the price differential in getting stuff from the UK.

And on a final note, I would be more than happy to buy from any (almost) dealer in Ireland if they could get what I'm looking for.

Mick - no contest - Sky News wrapped around a TV125

Dave

Dave

Shane,
I love the signature! When do you meet??

:lol:

I would guess as often as he can :twisted:

I would guess as often as he can :twisted:

as long as the power doesn't go to the head he will be fine .
stephen.