I thought I would update on what I did. So I bought an On-One ScandAL 29er from the UK. XT throughout, Fulcrum Red Metal wheels, upgraded the chainset to an FSA K Force. ScandAL comes with a carbon fork by default, so upgraded to the Reba Air forks. Now I have a UK bank account - so I'm not subject to exchange rate issues, so that was also a factor in my thinking. I also used the calculations elsewhere on this forum for determining the likely duty - it still looked like a good bet even with the duty to me. On-One/Planet X used TNT ParcelPak to send the bike. I was expecting it to be delivered to the door. On Friday I had a phone call from Leaping Frog post office saying "there is a very large parcel for you, please come and get it". Proactive service from SAPO??? Obviously it was in the way.... I was told there was R1700 to be paid. This was a lot less than I was expecting... So I picked up the bike - and looked at the customs calculation and only VAT has been levied - no import duty. So it all worked out very well....maybe the delivery to SAPO rather than a courier played to my benefit on this occasion. I mentioned to On-One that using a service that uses SAPO for the last mile is a bit dodgy and that the box had taken a hammering in transit (though they had wrapped it very well). They are in the process of changing courier/service. On-One were very good in turning the order around - I wanted the bike for next weekend and they built it up the next day, following a phone call (normally 7 working days from order to despatch for complete bikes).
