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Help buying Macbook Pro in Japan/South Korea

B

btosio

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 21, 2023
6
1
Hello everyone. I´m a student travelling to Japan and South Korea on February-Early March. I´m looking to buy the new Macbook Pro M2 Pro (except I find an insane deal on M1 Pro), but I´m a bit worried about prices-discounts-keyboards...
In Japan, I´m not sure I´ll find an english version keyboard in store, but in that case, I could apply for a student discount(some people say it works, some it doesn´t for international students.). If I order online, I wont get any discount... Also, tax is not refundable from 2022. That leaves me with the option of yodabashi, biccamera, rakuten, etc. They don´t have student discounts (some people have said prices are kind of negotiable?) but I would most likely get a tax refund. Again, not sure they´ll have a US keyboard.
Later I´m going to South Korea which has one store. To my understanding, there is both tax refund and student discount (on it´s website it says unidays which wasn´t working for me). US keyboard again not sure if available in store. If bought online, I´m losing on tax refund and quite possibly student discount aswell.
Any ideas on what to do? I think south korea is my best chance to buying a us keyboard mac as cheap as possibe.
Best to y´all
 
If you are coming from the US buy before you leave. Cheap/discount on Apple products will not be found in Japan.

Source: I live here.
 
takumei said:
If you are coming from the US buy before you leave. Cheap/discount on Apple products will not be found in Japan.

Source: I live here.
Click to expand...
I'm actually from Argentina, though my flight has a stopover on Houston. Thing is, MBP 16 is 2300 + tax = +2500usd aprox in the US(Student disc). In Japan with student discount it's 320.800 yen which is aprox 2475 usd. And if I could also get tax return it would be even cheaper
 
Right. That's unfortunate... I had read on previous posts that some big stores usually have US Keyboard in stock.
 
Tax refunds mostly come from big electronic stores…Yamaha, BIC camera, Nojima, Labi, and a few others. A lot of the stores on Kakaku are only online shops. The fact of the matter is you want the US keyboard and that is going to have to come from Apple. If we had a lot of stores with the laptop available I would point you there for a deal. In this case there is no need to add risk, just order it from Apple so that it will be available to pick up when you arrive.
I also think that Apple stopped the tax-free shopping last year; if not they will definitely be stopping soon due to their taxes owed to the government.
 
takumei said:
Tax refunds mostly come from big electronic stores…Yamaha, BIC camera, Nojima, Labi, and a few others. A lot of the stores on Kakaku are only online shops. The fact of the matter is you want the US keyboard and that is going to have to come from Apple. If we had a lot of stores with the laptop available I would point you there for a deal. In this case there is no need to add risk, just order it from Apple so that it will be available to pick up when you arrive.
I also think that Apple stopped the tax-free shopping last year; if not they will definitely be stopping soon due to their taxes owed to the government.
Click to expand...
I’m aware that bic camera provides reservation order for foreign tourists, I wonder if they could accept I place an order for an upgraded MacBook Pro 16 M2 Max(96gb, 4TB)? And they could give Apple Japan BTO afterwards. I know some Apple authorized resellers can give such service in some countries. If this is feasible, does bic camera still provides tax and credit card discount? Are there any other Japanese stores that could provide these upgraded mbp pro reservation order with tax/credit card discounts?
 
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