Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Golan Klinger, who writes:
Came across a deal I thought might be of interest to your readers. Radioworld (in Toronto, Canada) has the Eton Mini on sale for an incredible $19.99 CAD (the regular price is $49.99 CAD). I suspect many, perhaps even most, of your readers are in the U.S.A. which means the price works out to under $15 USD! Even with shipping, that’s a steal for what’s a pretty decent little radio.
Click here to view this deal at Radioworld.
Thanks for the tip! That’s a brilliant deal!
I’m sorry to hear that they won’t ship to the U.S.A. I’m quite sure they used to and if memory serves, they used to sell through eBay to U.S. buyers as well.
I feel badly about this so if anyone really wants one, I could always purchase it on your behalf and ship it to the U.S.A. I can’t imagine shipping would be too all that much.
Again. I apologize. It wasn’t my intention to mislead anyone.
No worries, Golan! Actually, I believe it’s a conundrum that Canadians experience a lot because so many US retailers won’t ship to Canada. No worries at all–in fact, the Mini isn’t that much more when on sale here and includes shipping. We’re only takling an extra savings of something like $5-10. That’s reasonable! 🙂
I just now spoke with Radioworld on the telephone. It’s correct, they do not ship outside Canada. No shipping to USA.
Yeah, it looks like they don’t sell/ship to the USA.
“No international orders.”
https://radioworld.ca/page/policies
Not even from the US? I know shipping to countries further afield could be complicated in various ways but one would think that the US could be managed?
There’s two things here.
One is that it may require too much paperwork. Dan’s Small Parts in the US stopped doing non-US orders because new postal regulations meant more paperwork.
The other is that there’s a certain effort required to bring things into Canada, to provide a service to Canadians, so selling to the US is like sending things back down the cliff. Other than a sale like this, I suspect Canadian stores can’t compete with US stores. So why go to the trouble of importing, only to export again?
If it was something manufactured in Canada, the US market would be vital. One local ham used to sell kits to modify rigs for scanning, and with more hams in the US, that market was vital. He basically priced for the US market and then derived the Canadian price from that. When there was a postal strike, he’d liad up a batch of kits, and drive to the US, and put them in the mail down there. Eat the cost in order to keep the market.
We don’t have many sources of radio equipment in Canada. The market can’t sustain much. So unless there is a good advantage to selling to the US, they won’t do it.
I think of used classic radios. I once saw a Galaxy R350 at the local hamfest. Likely few made their way to Canada, not enough people, and tariffs that increased the price. If the owner sold to the US, a wider audience to sell to. But if it goes to the US, it will never come back to Canada. Too much trouble.
Michael