Scarce phones can be bought cheaper than through parallel imports
It so happens that now Russia is the country of perhaps the cheapest smartphones in the world. However, the top models — primarily the Apple ones that have left our market — are still quite expensive for the average consumer. To be specific — over a hundred thousand rubles. Of course, there is a demand for “the same thing, but cheaper” — and therefore a semi-secret proposal appeared. As in Soviet times, equipment brought by private owners is sold literally under the counter. MK found out how the gray supply scheme works.
The task is to buy a new iPhone (many will say that this is not entirely meaningful these days, but there are still those who want to). The price of this gadget in a certain configuration in the usual communication stores is about 130 thousand rubles. But, it turns out, there is an alternative: if you ask at the “tent” for mobile accessories (they usually repair digital equipment there), the manager will say that they are there.
“You’ll just have to wait a little, the courier will take an hour -one and a half,” says Valentina, an employee of one of these service centers. “But we have very good prices.”
Indeed, after several minutes of clarifying current prices (they change with fluctuations in the dollar exchange rate), the employee gives the exact figure: 108 thousand rubles. 25 thousand savings — look bad! We agree, for this money you can wait an hour. Even two: couriers are late due to Moscow traffic jams.
Similar prices could be found in some “non-branded” online stores, but there you are forced to give your address to the courier, and besides the delivery employee himself, you have no one to contact regarding the quality of the goods. But here, everything is just like in a real store: inspection of goods before payment, receipts (albeit electronic), the possibility of payment in any form. And those same two weeks for returns.
In general, everything is like in a store — only without a display: “Ask the seller.”
“Most likely, we are talking about “shuttle” supplies from third countries like Turkey or the Emirates, as well as from China, these are the main channels now,” says Vladimir Lyubushkin, owner of a smartphone repair service. — A feature of Chinese models is two slots for physical SIM cards, this is a proprietary feature of models for this market. Both large firms and private traders are engaged in parallel imports (and, of course, there is no direct import now). The latter have a greater variety of models, and prices can indeed be more interesting.
The price of iPhones in China in dollar terms is one of the lowest in the world. It is believed that in this country, American-brand smartphones do not have the same “cult” status as in other regions. At the same time, without customs duties, the import of goods is, of course, limited (in the spring of this year it was possible to import phones worth $1,500 by car or train, or two pieces by plane).
But there is a little trick: to this number of duty-free phones you can add as many as you took from Russia to China. “That’s why we now have a stable demand for old models of used iPhones; they are being exported in order to import new ones instead,” says Vladimir Lyubushkin. “You just have to convince the customs officers that you need to export and then import a dozen pipes at once, but those who do this know how it’s done.”
Having imported the pipes into Russia, the “freelancers” pass them on to wholesalers (which is understandable; you can’t sell them yourself). This is how those signs that are not publicly available appear with the current availability of models and prices. “Approximately the same system that existed with the shuttle traders in the 1990s; they also did not sell what they brought themselves, but handed it over to professionals in the markets,” recalls the serviceman.
If it was not on sale (and in basically in Russia now) “white” Apple smartphones — there is not much difference in how exactly the gadgets are imported. “As for the guarantee, in principle it exists, it is international and does not depend on the place where the phone is activated,” says Vladimir Lyubushkin. — The only caveat is that you can only replace or repair an iPhone for free where the manufacturer is present, that is, abroad. With us, any repair is also available, but, alas, only for money, since we do not have an Apple representative office and do not pay anything.”
In a similar way, they deliver some household appliances to the domestic market, added MK’s interlocutor . True, due to their size, washing machines or refrigerators are still produced not by shuttle traders, but by companies. But the principle “if something is not on sale, ask the seller, maybe you can get it” remains. In general, this is a tenacious principle — even our grandfathers (see the film “Beware of the Car”) survived and traded this way.