I’m sure that everyone knows that you can buy items overseas for less. But after shipping and time are you really saving money?

I decided to do a brief shopping experiment. I went to louisvuitton.com and selected USA as my country. I opened another browser window and selected the UK as my country. I searched on both sites for the ‘Epi Leather Speedy 30’ in black, and here’s what I found:

UK PRICE ₤620 + ₤15 (shipping) = ₤635 ≈ $959.26
USA PRICE $1050 + $63 (tax) = $1113
[The current exchange rates (as of 5/14/09 8:55am ET): ₤1 = $1.51054. www.xe.com/ucc/]

Now we need to figure out how much shipping will cost from the UK to Pennsylvania.

₤29.19 (28 days economy shipping) ≈ $44.09 ( http://www.parcelforce.com/)

Since the item is less than $2,000 and is a gift, there will be no import duty.

So how much did we save?

USA net price = $1113
UK net price converted = $1003.35
Net savings = $109.65
Net savings percent = 9.85%

That’s pretty impressive considering that Louis Vuitton almost NEVER puts their classic handbags on sale. It will take some patience and a nice friend in the UK to ship it to you but worth it if you like to save every penny like me!!! I don’t think I’ve ever paid full retail USA-price for anything except for my Louis Vuitton monogram canvas Speedy 30. But that was 4 years ago when I didn’t know the tricks of retail.