"Plake" wrote ...
I'm going to Utah for 2wks in March and want to take advantage of the
USD/GBP exchange rate by buying new ski & board gear:

Rossignol B2/Fritschi Diamir £519 at Snow+Rock, £397 at rei.com
K2 Recon/Salomon SP3/Salomon Dialogue £664 at Snow+Rock, £355 at
rei.com!

So I have a couple of questions:

1) I suspect the US stores are pressurised by the European
manufacturers not to sell gear to Europeans. Is this true, and will
paying cash at the store help?

I'm sure the European retailers would prefer that you buy from them and not
those bloody colonial shops with their ridiculously low prices, but why
would the manufacturers give a ****? Once they ship their goods to the
distributor and from there to the retailer, I don't think it matters to them
who buys the stuff.

2) If I declare the stuff at customs when I bring it back to the UK,
what will the import duty cost?

It might be worth asking before you leave how much use the equipment has to
get before it is considered used, and therefore subject to a lower tax rate,
or no tax at all.
HTH,
--
mark