In October, once I’m back in Taiwan in a stable way, I’m planning to purchase a printer to print photos at home and sell them online, skipping the middle man (aka: print stores that drain part of my shekels).
There’s a minor inconvenience though, and that is cost. In the US, thanks to mail in rebate programs from Adorama, B&H etc it’s possible to purchase an A3 Canon printer like the Pro 100 for roughly 100$. In Taiwan that model costs close to 16000nt…but hey, you get a free pack of the cheapest print paper!!!11!one -_____-’
That kind of mail in rebate system is only available in the US. I’m sure that even considering import taxes it would be far cheaper for me to buy the printer in the US and having it sent here rather than giving 16k to Canon Taiwan (which doesn’t even offer CPS services here).
You can try amazon.com. I didn’t look for your Canon, but as you can see you can search for printers that are available for shipping to Taiwan.
By the way, have you checked out the prices of ink? Printers are usually so cheap because the ink is so expensive. Kinda like giving away shavers and making a killing on the shaving blades. Just saying.
It ships to Taiwan, but with shipping and import duties the price is roughly 15k, so I’d rather buy it from Canon Taiwan in that case.
The only reason why I’m looking for a way to buy it from the US are the offers from B&H and Adorama which offer a huge mail in rebate, but they’re limited to the most US states.
I just had a bunch of amazon stuff delivered to me in Hsinchu. I wasn’t able to ship it here directly, though. Instead I had to ship it to the PO Box I use for US mail (in Texas).
The mail service then broke apart and combined everything into one box and shipped it here. Wasn’t cheap. USPS International was US$162. FedEx Priority was US$93 (FedEx vanilla was US$91), and I had it here in 3 business days. Had to pay an extra NT$159 in tax to the FedEx delivery guy, downstairs at the front desk.
I also looked (briefly) into having it delivered to Guam and then going there to pick it up physically. Using FedEx was (far) cheaper.
Did you contact B&H or Adorama and ask if they’ll ship to you here?
I sent them an email to see what can be done. I’m afraid the offer is only done by Canon US so they may be a bit stingy about location. I think every now and then even Canon EU does something similar and it’s limited to the EU.
Only Canon Taiwan is uber-beta and offers no CPS, no mail in rebate system and no refurbished stuff. FeelsScammedMan.
I recently brought two canon printers from the uk with me, if i want to use genuine canon inks i have to import them also as the inks are area coded, Europe, US, etc.
You could always get third party ink from china they seam to copy ink from everywhere (the ones in Taiwan seam to be for local printer models).
The problem with any third party ink is colour continuity, which if you are printing photos will be an issue, you may find yourself burning through paper and ink to get the correct tones only for them to change the formula 6 months down the line. if you have a spectrophotometer to build your own ICC profiles this will be fine.
My advise as with all printer purchases is to pay attention to the ink, its cost and availability before you end up shelling out more than you expect.
