#SAVE60K
By following these 6 easy steps everyone can save up to 25% on the price of a car and, for instance, own Porsche Cayenne for the price of Lexus RX. This is a copy of Facebook posts series.
7 OCT 2015
SINGAPORE CAR MARKET MUST BE DISRUPTED!
Car dealers are playing natural monopolies in Singapore (1 dealer per car brand) and if in other countries cars are sold with the discount to MSRP, in Singapore they are sold at a premium to it.
One can even see by HOW MUCH the cars are overpriced! For that:
1. Determine your car Open Market Value (OMV) value here.
2. Calculate your REAL car price including Singapore taxes using the data from here.
3. Compare it to the price of a car dealer will offer you.
Worst to that – spare parts are affected too (even though there are no other taxes on them besides 7% GST (VAT) comparing to the vehicle tax structure), sometimes spare parts cost 3 – 4 times the price you can bring them by yourself from overseas.
Brands representatives themselves apparently do not have control over the price structure of the dealers (some of them told me that they have “SOME” control not clarifying what does it mean).
This is clearly a sign of the vertical that needs to be disrupted!
8 OCT 2015
I THOUGHT OVERNIGHT AND DECIDED TO DISRUPT SINGAPORE CAR MARKET FOR MYSELF
My goal is to SAVE a minimum $60,000 on a new car purchase (or in other words to get Certificate of Entitlement (COE) for free).
So a new project was born: #Save60K
12 OCT 2015
STEP 1: FIND A DEALER THAT’LL SELL ME A CAR WITHOUT VAT
Am decided that for several reasons my next car will be an SUV. So, I narrowed down the 4 models I like, found and wrote to the respective dealers the same letter, basically checking if they will sell me a VAT-free car for export. Dealers are located not in Singapore in the country that sells right-hand side wheel cars.
I received 2 positive replies from 2 different car vendor dealers that sell the models I narrowed down. I have also sent 2 emails to the Customs (different departments) of the country I’d like to export a car from the question on if I can purchase a new car duty free from the local dealer without registering a car in that country (just to cross check dealers replies in order to save my time in the future).
I’m also checking a “Plan B” if there is a way to buy a new but already registered car in that country and how can I claim the VAT back to myself. I think there are 3 options of doing so:
- to find a dealer/company that will sell me a car tax free for a certain fee (I’ll know my car cost from the car dealer as I’ll be negotiating it by myself, so this intermediate will get only a certain fee rom me), and I’ll pay full price of the car first (including duties) and then this dealer/company will return those duties to me, or
- find a private person who for a certain fee will purchase a car on his name for the full price and then will sell the car to me and return me duties, or
- register the company on my name in that country, and purchase a car through my company for the full price, and then export a car & return the duties to the company first and than further to myself second.
I expect “Plan B” research to take up to 2 hours of my time. The next step is to test-drive all 4 models: 2 models whose dealers sent me a positive reply, and 2 models for just in case.
20 JAN 2016
STEP 2: A CAR IS ORDERED
A new SUV has been ordered. As per calculations on today’s date (EUR/SGD exchange rate does matter) I’m saving $86,000. Well, in fact I’m saving $164,700 in total as one of my friends believed in me, and I have ordered 2 cars of the same model in total (with different options though), so we are right on track on the project numbers.
New cars should be manufactured in March-April 2016 timeframe.
Currently I’m negotiating terms with a couple of shipping companies. WIP.
18 MARCH 2016
STEP 3: FIND LOGISTIC COMPANY TO SHIP CARS TO SINGAPORE
Wonderful news at the end of this week – our two cars were born! I already know the VIN number for both of them. Now car vendor logistics will take 8 weeks to deliver it to my vendor in Europe.
I need now to arrange a logistic company which will put both cars in a 40ft container and ship it to Singapore. Also, research on the best insurance price for both cars. I heard AVIVA is very competitive these days as they sell online without agent’s commission. Will check couple of others too like NTUC and Tenet Sompo
Yay, super excited! Now need EURO to SGD exchange rate to go down in the next couple of months to pay less ARF and other fees upon custom clearance and registration.
3 JUL 2016
STEP 4: SHIP CARS TO SINGAPORE
Excited! Both cars were received from the dealer, staffed in a 40ft container, and sent to Singapore. The container will arrive at the end of July and the final part with documents will begin. In a preparation to unloading cars I found a loading bay to where I can drive the cars out from container and then using a ramp bring them to the ground. Am waiting with impatience now!
31 JUL 2016
STEP 5: SUBMIT DOCUMENTS TO LAND AND TRANSPORT AUTHORITY (LTA) APPROVAL
The cars are finally in Singapore! Yay!
Surprisingly it took almost 5 working days for the Customs clearance… At day 4 I lost patience and started to call Customs myself. Only when I reached Deputy Head Tariffs & Trade Services for Director-General of Customs things started to move quickly (it turned out that Custom’s system was down for 2 days). With Deputy Head’s help I got container cleared in 1 day. Then the container was delivered to the warehouse and I drove cars out from container and brought them on flatbed trucks to my condo (as cars are not registered yet – they can’t be driven on public roads yet).
Today I filled all LTA papers and took all necessary pictures of both cars like from the front, rear, left, right, instrumental panel, engine compartment, VIN and engine numbers, exhaust system layout, etc. and will submit papers to LTA tomorrow to wait for the LTA approval.
So, if I would have bought cars ex-stock from dealer, it would take me only one month to get them to Singapore, but as soon as both cars were built to order (because of the specs we chose) – it took a bit longer.
Intermediate project summary:
Open Market Value (OMV) – as planned
Project timeline – as planned
1 AUG 2016
STEP 5 FOLLOW-UP: SUBMIT DOCUMENTS TO LTA
Submitted documents to LTA today to get approval code for both cars so that to proceed for vehicle inspection later. No queue to the counter. Officer took all document but asked to bring original Certificate of Conformity, Invoice and all documents and pictures on thumb drive. Ok, will stop by tomorrow to pass them to him and will be waiting for approval within 4 weeks. Asked to speed up the process, he said he will try =) Ok, that will do. Will be looking forward for a next step.
26 AUG 2016
STEP 6: PASS THE VEHICLE INSPECTION AND PROCEED TO VEHICLE REGISTRATION
LTA approval came on Monday morning, LTA needed 3 weeks to process the documents and all the data on the cars was put in a Government shared DB. With this approval letter I loaded both cars to flatbed trucks (as cars are still w/o number plates and can’t use public roads) and went to a Vehicle inspection centre. It took only 20 minutes for both cars to pass inspection, but during inspection it was revealed that some of the information in the DB differs from the findings of the inspection (most probably because of the mistakes the officer made While transferring information from hand written form to the database). Thus, I needed one more day to get the final approval from the LTA – they sent it to me by email.
At the same time, I bought car insurance online (I will need it for vehicle registration) and submitted bid for the COE auction (10 year license to drive the car in Singapore).
With the final approval letter I went to the LTA to the vehicle registration counter and submitted documents for registration. The officer promised to process documents in a couple of days if all documents are fine. LTA will have to issue me the outstanding tax amount I have to pay (like Additional registration fee ARF, balance for the COE (while bidding I prepaid 10K and will need to pay the balance based on the resulted auctioned COE bidding price), Road tax, etc.) and after that I will register the cars and will know their number plates (they will be assigned to me by the LTA system).
The final step after the car registration – is to go back to Vehicle inspection centre to install In-Vehicle Unit (IU) – the device in which a Cash card is installed (that is used to pay for parking and payable roads). As IU is tied up to the vehicle number plate I was not able to install it at the time I passed the vehicle inspection. I hope next week I will be able to drive the car already
27 AUG 2016
PROJECT – COMPLETED
Today I installed the IU and that completed #Save60K project. Here are the results:
1. 98,437 SGD (72,400 USD) – this is how much I saved for my car (out of planned 60K SGD). Always under promise and over deliver =)
2. 183,000 SGD (~134,600 USD) – this is how much I saved on both cars.
3. Two months (July 3 – August 27) – this is how much time does it take to import own car if purchased ex-stock or from incoming transit. My project took longer as we customised both cars (Porsche cars are highly customisable).
Six steps – this is how little time it takes for self importation (especially comparing to own savings).
Now you know how to do it.
21 MAR 2018
P.S. WARRANTY REPAIR AT OFFICIAL CAR DEALERSHIP
From 1 Jan 2018 a new rule by Competition Commission of Singapore (“CCS”) kicked in which allows you to:
1. Service your car at any car workshop you like.
2. Maintain the right to perform warranty repair at official car dealership.
3. Not paying for “Adoption Packages” often priced and more than $10K by official dealers ONLY to take your car to their service center.
So by bringing your car by yourself you are no longer required to buy those ridiculous “Adoption Packages”, can service at any reputable workshop and still perform warranty repair at official Service Centre (that was before 1 Jan 2018 charging you “Adoption Packages” for that). Competition Commission of Singapore (“CCS”)
I just check with the head of the Service Centre of my car brand and they indeed started to comply to that rule.