Has anyone in the US ever ordered anything from Pianodepot.com or Musicproducts.com? They are located in Belgium. Their prices for high end Yamaha digitals are substantially lower than found in the states (even when considering shipping charges).

For example, a Yamaha PF1000 in the states goes for ~ $3000 + tax & S/H, let's say $3300 to $3500 depending on delivery. The same unit from pianodepot is just under $2400 delivered to your door.

The only hang up I can find is that the instruments are built for european current (220V), so a step up voltage converter would be required for use in the states (~$30).

Any info about the company would be appreciated.

Thanks, Tony

There is more to buying from Europe than shipping costs and voltage conversions. There is the matter of warranty coverage. Yamaha USA won't honor warranties provided by Yamaha dealers in other countries. Weigh that against the fact that most of these electronic products may not need warranty coverage at all.

Voltage conversion should be relatively simple -- just buy a voltage converter.

You should also consider the currency conversion surcharge imposed by your credit card company for goods purchased outside the United States. These surchages range from 0 to 3% on the amount converted.

Despite all of these, the price break may justify buying abroad. I think you should check out the www.cvpug.com (Calvinova User group) site (the group is hosted on Yahoo as a Yahoo group -- cvpug) site. There are many discussions about buying abroad (canada, germany, belgium)archived in the group's message boards (searchable) that will generally apply to any digital piano/keyboard.

I think you should also factor in dealer support (you may or may not need it), dealer value add (Yamaha USA apparently throws in some goodies into some of its higher end products that you won't find in equivalents sold abroad), resale (would the buyer balk if they see that they need a voltage converter -- again may not be a big deal if you don't plan to sell it or if you price in those concerns) etc etc.