Most Internet businesses don’t care about Sri Lanka. Most places don’t ship here, and they don’t tell you till the end of the process (or deep in their documentation). Amazon ships books, but not most other stuff. Apple doesn’t ship anything. It’s not physical, but services like Netflix or Rhapsody don’t even digitally send music here. It’s quite annoying.
Thus, I was surprised when I (randomly) visited Guitar Center and it immediately told me that they ship to Sri Lanka. First off, it’s quite smart to pick up my Sri Lankan IP and give me relevant information, and it’s thoughtful. I’m not actually buying anything from there, well, I guess I might look around.
I’m actually quite touched that they’ve implemented such a personal algorithm. So, thank you for giving a shit about the Sri Lankan consumer. I actually ran through and checked out a $110 guitar. The shipping cost is $112, so not great, but that’s still competitive with a normal Yamaha round here. I’m not buying either right now, but still, nice that they care.
You might check the credit card rules which say that credit cards can only be used for travel related expenses. There is some kind of limit on foreign spending for other things such as books bought on credit cards.
Also, you will have to spend a lot of time at the International Parcel section of the Post Office to retrieve the guitar. They hassle me when I bring in more that one or two books from Amazon, so I have decided to swallow the extra shipping costs and order in small quantities.
It’s a bit odd, but Guitar Center has an option where you pay $40 and they say that they take care of any (or no) customs and duties. I still don’t think it makes sense to get a guitar down.