Hi Nicolaq,
Never thought my first posting would be about VAT..
Saw your posting. As I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to numbers and buying from the States. I thought I would look at the figures. I used to work for a US PC Flight Sim joystick company (in the good old days) and was always running into the problem of US imports in to the UK and Europe.
So it was fair I looked at exactly the same model from Elite and The Keyboard Company. The USA layout FKBN104M/EB – NKRollover.
From Elite with shipping to Belgium and using today’s exchange rate from
http://www.oanda.com it was €130.87 On to that, if sent on a commercial invoice which Elite should do, the carrier would have to charge VAT at 21% so that takes it up to €158.36. Now I know you might get away without paying the VAT but your posting suggests that you know you have to pay it. Besides, I do know in the past that people have got caught and EU law is now clamping down on carriers to make sure they do the right thing.
Keyboard Company would automatically charge VAT unless I guess you were a company . Using the same web site for the exchange rate it came up to €148.76
So they are €10 cheaper plus in the unlikely event you have a problem, they maybe easier to deal with.
Elite state on their web site - EliteKeyboards products that are shipped outside of the USA and Canada are not covered by this warranty – not sure how they handle International Sales
Keyboard Co don’t seem to have any restriction.
There is an old English expression – You pays yours money, you take your choice.
I know which one I will choose.