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wheeledhorseman

OEM parts from the UK or import from US (comparison)

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wheeledhorseman

:UK:

 

As we have had a few new members recently and as I have just been ordering parts I thought the following comparison might be useful to anyone new into restoring :wh: here. ($ converted to £)

 

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NOTES

 

Ordering from the US there is no VAT to pay when goods in a package enter this country if the value of the goods within the package is under £15. The order listed above would need to be ordered and sent as the separate items shown to avoid VAT There is possibly a saving to be made on shipping if they were sent as one consignment but then there would be VAT to pay on import and carriers like the Post Office also levy a charge on top for collecting it. Delivery time from the US varies between 7 - 14 days and is generally about 10 days in my experience.

 

Ordering from my local Toro dealer by phone and credit card took perhaps 10 minutes including the time taken for the guy to check prices for me and that they were in stock here in the UK with Hayter (which they were). Hayter hold and distribute Toro Wheel Horse spares in the UK but you cannot deal with them directly. The parcel arrived next morning by Fedex directly from Hayter but does need signing for. If a particular part is not in stock here in the UK it can take some time to arrive but my experience is that it is sent on as soon as it does arrive with no additional postage charge.

 

I deliberately compared the overall costs of genuine OEM parts using an Outdoor Power dealer in the US but for individual OEM items there are times when private vendors in the US on ebay have specific parts to offer at some very good prices. It is important to do your research before you decide where to buy.

 

Having the correct part numbers ready when contacting a Toro agent saves quite a bit of time. Unfortunately some of the part numbers given on the Toro lookup site have been superseded but they don't always update this. I use the 'Partstree' site in the US for this as their part numbers seem to be kept up to date. Unfortunately Partstree will not ship to the UK though.

 

A lot has changed in the last three years since I started needing WH parts. Toro bought Hayter and used them to distribute parts here at more reasonable prices than they had been charging previously. There seems to be a better stock now in the UK and delivery is vary fast. I still buy stuff including new OEM parts from the US but less than I did.

 

Finally worth mentioning that some OEM parts for older WHs are NLA on either side of the pond. Sometimes NOS stuff appears for sale in the US. Red Square is a good place for information about equivalent replacements when it comes to bearings etc though there are cases where no equivalent exists.

 

Hope this is of some interest and help - I'm sure other UK members will chip in with other useful information

 

Andy

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neil

Excellent info Andy .

I have often bought parts from US & have also had 5no complete tractors imported to UK , The UK vat charges & import charges can be a killer i find that the parts are cheaper in US so it either balances itself out or sometimes it can be cheaper to buy from US even though the postal & tax charges are added

 

Good topic

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Anglo Traction

I concur with everything you have stated Andy. I imported many parts, New and Used from 2009 on and the shipping was not too bad back then.

I also brought several parts through my local Toro Stockist (Tim & Simon) 

Import Shipping costs make it now virtually undesirable to buy from the U.S, and that is not accounting for Import Duty.

Although a few U.S. Sellers are still pretty good with their charges, and I will still use them.

Always a dilemma where you either pay more because of availability (US) or wait for it to become available here and have less choice of condition (if a Used part). Nice to have more than one option though.

I tend to buy my Service Kohler parts from the U.S. anyway.

.

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jwl

I don't buy any GT parts from England, but I do buy die-cast toys sometimes or trade for them with other toys from here. The shipping costs seem to offset  each other. The part I don't care for is the delay in getting stuff. I can send off a package to there and it arrives fairly quick, say within a week, but the one coming here sometimes takes 30 or more days to arrive. I believe this is because of our customs section and the constant fear by them that some terrorist is shipping something here.  Its sometimes a sad world.

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SousaKerry

Could be worse you could live in Brazil.  The company I work for bought out a competitor in Brazil and then replaced all of their antiquated equipment with ours.  As soon as we started shipping product into the country Brazil slapped a 300% terif on all US made imported machinery.  Oh and they doubled the necessary paperwork and made you buy an import license to bring them in.  All this was done to promote jobs within their country trouble is when your country has virtually no manufacturing it's kind of pointless.

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meadowfield

Great post Andy,

I think we all suffer from import duty and tax! The lift valve for my GT14 started at $30 (£22) by the time I collected it the price was (£70) after shipping and duty!

I do wish that when I worked there, I had brought a collection of parts back...

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Dual Drive Horse

Even as a dealer we have been known to get SH parts from the US, but Hayter are pretty good now with the stock they keep. Dont forget that parts that are no longer available in the USA are still sometimes in stock over here, we got several GT14 parts that are NLA in the states.

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CasualObserver

That's an interesting and good point.  Kind of like those "honey-hole" finds over here.  You just never know what "stock" is still hiding out there until you go ask.

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