My friend is going to travel from Finland to Shanghai next month and I thought that I'd make him bring me a 5DM3 body. It should be somewhat cheaper to buy it tax-free from a country outside EU. China has value-added tax of 17% (I googled) so I should be able to save at least that.
So... I've tried to find a decent place to buy genuine Canon stuff, but I do not understand chinese and there is no-one to do the translation for me.
Any hints? Experience on shopping cameras from China? What's a good price for 5DM3 body there? Where to do the shopping?
I'm located in China (although not Shanghai, so I cannot recommend specific shops). While China has VAT of 17%, there is also a luxury tax of 30% that you could get hit by. When I looked around for a 1.4x Extender III last year, I found that the price I got quoted in Beijing was above the price in Denmark.
The local
starting price for the 5D3 (you must haggle) is about RMB 25000 (when I casually asked, they said 25K but immediately offered it for 24K RMB) but
www.taobao.com (chinese ebay) lists the 5D3 down to about RMB 20000.
Since I can get the VAT back when exporting out of the EU, I ended up buying my 5D3 in Denmark since I have 2 years official warranty, although it was slightly more expensive.
As for translation from Chinese to English/Finnish/Swedish,
translate.google.com is your friend (although it isn't perfect).