This is addressed to mainly people in the UK, or if you have a particularly good knowledge on these sorts of things. If you don't know already, buying badminton equipment in the UK is very expensive compared to elsewhere. I would like to know where other people from the UK buy their equipment from, and how much they paid/saved and how much shipping was In particular, has anyone bought from Rakuten, and how much did the pay. - I know there are already Rakuten threads but they were from a while ago. Also where else do people buy from that's not in the UK e.g. websites. Any help is appreciated.
what rackets you after. I got two Victor rackets from Eric at squashmart. TK6000 and a TK9000. Both almost impossible to get in the UK. especially in 3U weight. two rackets I saved about £40. each. didn't get taxed by customs full tracking details and he provides photos of the items he's posting to you too lots of happy badminton central customers.
Nothing in particular as of yet, however I'm more of a 4U kind of guy, but I'd love to know more about this Eric you speak of haha!! Is he the guy who sells the RKEP grips, if so I've bought off him before and he had a great service.
Ah, just had a look, it seems it is the same Eric I bought my grips from. I had a look at the rackets and although they were good prices, with the shipping costs, they weren't too much less than buying local... Anyone know if Eric's prices are lenient?? or About Rakuten and their shipping costs???
You ought to message [MENTION=66823]Benwilluk[/MENTION] first, Ben will give you a good deal and great service. I've bought a lot from Ben and always go to him first.
Does this Ben have a shop or an ebay store that I can contact him through or can I just contact him directly. And [MENTION=57143]visor[/MENTION] - Do you know how lenient his prices are, for example a VT ZFii is around £115, how much could I get him to take off. Also to anyone who has bought from Rakuten from the UK, what was it like, and how much did you pay? Thanks!!
[h=3]rkepracket@gmail.com[/h] This is his Email. I first contacted through Ebay to buy a TK6000. We dealt outside of ebay so we both made a slight saving. Great service and he offers free stringing with Ashaway string. His stringing appears to be top notch too. Im a bit wary of getting rackets through ebay through fear of buying a fake. But Eric is reputable through this forum and he even posts on here from time to time. Both my rackets are top notch. I feel like i got a good deal on both rackets. Both were well packaged and from Taiwan to UK took about 4 days. Almost as fast as a UK sourced racket. I know Eric sells Yonex. Cant say about price but Even £115 is much cheaper then say central sports whom are selling the ZFii for £150. Cant recommend him enough and if ni buy any more rackets i would be messaging him first
Really depends on what racket you want. So for example, if you want a Voltric Z Force 2, Decathlon were selling this in-store for £129.99, but not sure about stringing. I know it's more than RKEP, but it's cheaper than Centralsports. On RKEP, one word of caution, please factor in Customs charges as a worse case scenerio, which will probably be around £25-£30. One way around this is to order lots, so you save more. Out of the stuff I've ordered from RKEP, two big packages have been charged and maybe 2 haven't. Note , lots of small items have made it through fine. I've ordered a Gosen racket off Rakuten before, it got customed charged, since it was marked correctly.
That is true, the base price is a lot cheaper, but adding on the shipping makes it only slightly cheaper, so it wouldn't necessarily be a good deal as it is easier to buy locally, that's why I wanted to know if I could get a better price.
For RKEP and Rakuten, was there any way to not get charged or was it completely just unlucky. Also how much were you charged?
on both my rackets the contents was declared as badminton racket but value £12. Both times no customs charges. just lucky I guess.
Sorry, did you mean that the racket were valued at £12 and therefore not charged. If so, were they valued by Eric or the people at customs?
You should take advantage of how well we're doing against the euro right now! I've bought from Badmania (http://badmania.fr) in the past and they've been very good. Lots of items on sale and pretty much all of their prices are roughly numerically equivalent to the prices here..... but in euros Shipping to the UK is also very cheap (and no customs charges like you'd get from asian stores).
AH-ha This is very interesting. The prices seem great and the idea of no custom charges is an exciting prospect. This may be exactly what I'm looking for. However, the only drawback is that they don't have as many weight options e.g. 4U ZFII. Do you know of any other European websites that do have more weight options. By the way thanks to [MENTION=89219]mannygk[/MENTION] and everyone else who has helped me so far, I really appreciate it and I have learned so much just from a few people telling me a few things that they already knew - Thanks!!
