The MoCo makes the sale no matter who sells it. US dealers are not authorized to do export business.

 

I can't speak for the natives but I won't be rewarding the MoCo's greed by paying 2-3 times the price fellow Americans are paying.

 

Yea, I needed a battery for 08 Fatbob and dealer has to order the thing. If they can't stock batteries whats next? The prices are out of site now and half the country is hurting bad, looks like they would try to help their faithful instead of driving them away.

 

Can someone confirm that MOCO charges foreign dealers exhorbitant prices? Or is it possible that the dealers are doing the markup?

 

No more dealer ebay sales after 1/2012. Talked to my local parts guy, he does a lot of ebay sales. He said both policies are in place to protect the dealers and to get you in the door. You aren't gonna impulse buy one of there bikes online.

And ebay isn't helping, they now charge sellers for purchase price and shipping. Flat rate overseas is $40-50. So it costs the seller another $4-5 over what it did a few months ago.

A lot of overseas guys will set up a US middleman, order multiple parts and have them sent to US address and then sent on to their country.

 

No, but you have to call every month and fight it.

 

meh. The overseas market is small. So I am sure they are not worried about you folks in Japan and Australia going elsewhere for parts and what not. Not trying to be a dick ... just sayin

How much of a discount do you think those indy's really get? I have yet to find one get me cheaper than what I can get by calling my guy at the dealership. Course, he is a friend of mine and I get the friend price and free shipping, and no tax.

I just don't see the uproar. You see all the time on this site "The MOCO needs to do something to keep from going under" but whenever they do something, it turns into a personal slight like you walked in on them gang banging your wife

 

What about competition? Some HD sell genuine HD part at a 20% discount, plus no sales tax, so I believe the local dealers jumped on corporate and said if you want to improve our store sales, stop the internet sales that sell at deep discount. That limits competition and thus increases prices.

Anchors aweigh.

 

Thank god I own a V-Rod, not much support from the dealer to begin with. Just about any new or replacement part I have is after market.

 

I'm not as sure as you that HD's overseas sales is that small.

I have not looked at their latest annual report, but at one time their international sales made up about 1/3 of their total revenues. Maybe someone else will want to look up the current ratio of domestic to international sales revenue.

My understanding of at least part of the reason for this new policy is that their international distributors were being left out of the overseas sales process by allowing domestic dealers to sell to overseas customers. I'm sure those distributor's complaints were heard and were answered by this new policy.

I cannot testify as to how much HD charges international distributors compared to domestic, but I do know that a lot of countries have tariffs and other fees/taxes on imported parts that really jack up prices of anything imported. I was in Malaysia in 1995 and saw an ad for a new Honda Goldwing and the price was around $35,000. I asked a co-worker and they indicated that the high price was due to additional charges added by the country.

I'm betting HD is under the impression that most of the people buying parts from US dealers and shipping them overseas will go to their local HD outlet for them if they can no longer buy them from the US. We'll have to see how that works out. But, if you need a part for your bike that only HD makes, what else can you do besides park the bike?

I'm thinking the next step after eliminating domestic dealers selling overseas and Ebay sales will be to restrict domestic dealers from selling outside their immediate area. If you want a part you'll have to buy it from a local dealer and not mail order it from a dealer in another state.