Jordan buy a scope in USA and do a business with that here and tell us about the NAFTA and i ll be very pleased to see your experiences this is not what im seeing every day.
everyday we pay duties from US stuffs coming and im not the only one paying. you re certainly more clever than i but as official i have to pay and trust canadian duties never forget me plus the handling fees but again do it and report again on the official market ...
legally means the import-export document from state dpt no grey market ...
I buy stuff from the US on a daily basis for business, and if the product is made in the US you do not have to pay any duty. Brokerage, shipping, GST, etc, yes you have to pay all of those fees, if applicable, but not duty. You only pay duty if the product is made outside of NA, even if it is sold by a US company.
I was tempted to post earlier but changed my mind as frequently the guys posting on here think they know it all and it is a major waste of time to convince them otherwise. However as I happen to know Calvin I will post this one last time and hopefully this clears things up.
1.) Grey Market - People are tossing this around without really knowing what they are talking about. I referred to purchasing a scope in the USA and the label "grey market" was used to make it sound shady. I will point this out one last time. A scope purchased from a Leupold recognized dealer in the USA and then legally imported into Canada is not grey market. PERIOD.
2.) Korth Group is NOT Leupold - they are a distributor in Canada that happens to service Leupold scopes.
3.) Canadian Warranty used by Leupold refers to scope servicing services by Korth Group. Not Leupold Warranty in General.
4.) Legally purchasing a Leupold doesn't invalidate your warranty regardless if you purchase your scope in Canada or USA. If Korth refused to service your scope for whatever reason, Leupold would still honor the warranty in the USA.
5.) Korth Gp not Leupold is trying to do a little bit of Market Control using their Service Depot as a selling point.
6.) Is Leupold corrupt bad or evil? IMO No - I personally think that Korth Group is using underhanded tactics to force Canadians to buy all Leupold Scopes through them but as an independent entity they are able to do whatever they damn well please.
7.) Are Leupold Scopes cheaper in the USA vs Canada? YES and NO. Do a simple search for all the recognized Leupold dealers in the USA and you will easily see that there are significant savings to be had. I would also point out that in the Cost-Analysis, only certain scopes are "Cheaper" (i.e. High end Mark 4 Scopes) while lower end scopes may be priced lower the effort of bringing them in almost negates the savings.
8.) Why did I buy USA and not Canadian? The reasoning was quite simple - I bought my Mark 4 Scopes about 5-6 years ago. At that point in time, Korth Group was unable to service these scopes and as such any custom orders had to go through Leupold USA anyway. With all the dealer markups and hoopla, I found that I was able to contact Leupold directly to order what I wanted and do the paperwork myself and I saved a significant amount of money (~$500 bucks/scope) Some guys may call me a liar but I did everything on the up and up (I still have all my paperwork) and comparing receipts showed me the truth of buying locally and buying from the States direct. Would I do this for every scope? Hell no, my time is too valuable to waste to save a few bucks but for big purchases this totally makes sense.
Just my 2 cents.
Lets see if I can explain grey market through one example ------ a Cdn company goes to Europe (lets get away from USA which everyone thinks is part of Canada for some reason) and brings back a container of scopes that they bought from a retailer there that was going out of business. They get a steal of a deal.
The Cdn Company legally bring them into Canada and then retails the scopes through their business as Brand New ### scopes for cheap $$$.
Everyone buys them THINKING they have the same rights as other ### scope buyers from authorized Canadian dealers.
They may or may not.
They bought European ### scopes that had certain rights attached to them. If those rights say that the ### scope is only warrantied by the Prague repair shop - then that is what you get. You dont get to proceed to the ### repair shop in Toronto and when they reject you - you get all huffy and say they are a bad bunch of so and so's and go on-line and claim a dirty plot is afoot. It is known as "passing off". The grey market scopes are passing off on the known repair policy of the brand. To be clear - passing off is more common with fakes, that is not the case in this example. It is more subtle than that - as the scope is real - but meant for a different region of the world.
The same applies to any consumer good. The fact that we live next to the USA appears to affect the way people think about pricing.
Like it or not we in Canada have higher labour costs, higher retail and income taxes (a lot higher in most cases), more regulations and many more business headaches. We (as a group) wonder what happened to all our gun businesses and gunsmiths. We (as a group) continually chase the last dollar.
We all watch television ads and read American magazines and think we are them. NAFTA has something to do with it - it does - but it is not all encompassing. We do have a hugely smaller market - it does matter when you purchase wholesale.
Take a look at the authorized dealers list of Korth - see what known retailers are there and who is not.
BTW - I believe that Korth has little to no concern with individuals bringing up product from the USA for their own use. It would amount to a drop in the bucket. It is the other grey market retailers that matter to them.
If you want Korth to close their doors and we deal with USA for all Leupold repairs - that can happen very easily. Otherwise - they have to do what is in their company's best interest. It is their business decision. They will live or die by it.
Very well explained and dead on accurate!I was tempted to post earlier but changed my mind as frequently the guys posting on here think they know it all and it is a major waste of time to convince them otherwise. However as I happen to know Calvin I will post this one last time and hopefully this clears things up....




























