Buying a B in Canada
Does anyone have a personal knowledge or experience purchasing a B in Canada vs the U S ? Are there $$$$ advantages of purchasing in Canada due to the strong U S dollar or do the legal issues of a p...
Forum Discussion
About a year ago, we were traveling through Canada and met a couple with a new Sprinter Class B. They were Canadian and their RV was of Canadian manufacturer. They gave us a short tour and we were impressed. We have a travel trailer now and had been thinking about a Sprinter Class B. It was from one of the major Canadian manufacturers. From our conversation, I inferred they had bought it from the factory.
I looked up the company on the Internet and browsed the website. The Canadian list price of the model we saw was around $130,000 CAD or 125,000 USD (these aren't exact, but they illustrate the general difference). Now, at an exchange rate of about 77%, 130,000 CAD should be $100,100 USD. SO, I fired off an email to the company and I asked them why the US price was higher, and they replied that it wasn't higher, but lower. Now, nobody like a smart donkey, so I wrote back again and noted that while the CAD price was higher if you just looked at the raw numbers, when the exchange rate was taken into account, it was much lower. I also asked whether I could come up to Canada with the appropriate amount of US cash, change it into CAD and buy the van and return to the US. The answer was: "if you do that neither we nor Mercedes will honor our warranties." Needless to say, we didn't pursue that any further. I don't get it; what difference does it make what currency the payment is in as long as it is equivalent to the CAD sales price. Subsequent research leads me to believe that all of the Canadian Class B outfits do likewise. In any event, after doing more research, we wound up buying a Sprinter from Mercedes for delivery to Sportsmobile in Indiana, where it will soon be done at a price more to our liking.
I looked up the company on the Internet and browsed the website. The Canadian list price of the model we saw was around $130,000 CAD or 125,000 USD (these aren't exact, but they illustrate the general difference). Now, at an exchange rate of about 77%, 130,000 CAD should be $100,100 USD. SO, I fired off an email to the company and I asked them why the US price was higher, and they replied that it wasn't higher, but lower. Now, nobody like a smart donkey, so I wrote back again and noted that while the CAD price was higher if you just looked at the raw numbers, when the exchange rate was taken into account, it was much lower. I also asked whether I could come up to Canada with the appropriate amount of US cash, change it into CAD and buy the van and return to the US. The answer was: "if you do that neither we nor Mercedes will honor our warranties." Needless to say, we didn't pursue that any further. I don't get it; what difference does it make what currency the payment is in as long as it is equivalent to the CAD sales price. Subsequent research leads me to believe that all of the Canadian Class B outfits do likewise. In any event, after doing more research, we wound up buying a Sprinter from Mercedes for delivery to Sportsmobile in Indiana, where it will soon be done at a price more to our liking.
