Duty free at DXB.
 

Quick question for those frequent travellers. In the market for a good watch and wanted to know whether there is much of a difference in the selection available when travelling through Terminal 1 (QR) to Terminal (EK). As I understand there is a 20% crew discount too on all watches except Rolex?!

Thanks for any help!

Not much of a difference as I remember. Checked quite extensively a couple of years ago before buying mine.

I assume you are talking about the specific staff discount days? Don't have any access to those any more since we moved down to JXB.

So the tax free stuff in Dubai is all just a lie for retail stores to make a bigger profit......grand, just grand:ugh:

I concur, far better off going to a mall if you have the time. Also my expereince in duty free at DBX is that they do not know very much about their products and don't really care either :zzz:

Not sure if you are asking about the difference between those terminals but just to say that QR and EK are actually in the same terminal despite the numbering. You can walk through the end of T1 into T3 and access DFS in both terminals.

IIRC the maximum duty on anything in Dubai is 3% - so DDF is a bit of a joke.

Watches
 

Watches are a fortune in Dubai especially the high end brands like Rolex, IWC etc, I found that you can get a much better deal by shopping around in the US.

Closer to here you could try Bahrain , I found when doing my research on a recent purchase that Rolex were around 20% cheaper there then in the Dubai mall.

You could also try the UK and claim the VAT back under the VAT Retail Export Scheme or Europe where I believe you can get the VAT back at the airport.

Dubaian...do you know if that tax rate applies to all products, more specifically, cameras?.

Yarra

Yes. The duty on cameras is usually max 5%. Not sure if you're talking about buying items already from stores on the UAE, or importing it yourself.
If you bring it in yourself, depends on who is working that day at customs....I've had duty on some camera and lenses some days, others not. Luck of the draw.
But it's usually far cheaper buying the stuff in the States (B+H), paying shipping and the 5% duty, than buying it here. Greed is alive and well here....

CEP, thank you. As for greed or more commonly called "margin" I agree...

A camera in B&H selling for 3k USD is 16k AED in DXB...a markup of 5k AED...

so happy to pay 550 AED tax if it is applied

Scamartist - be careful you don't live up to your name with the UK VAT export scheme. You are meant to remain outside the EU for a minimum of 12 months after you claim the refund. And they do check.

Discounts
 

What they do have there is an in city discount card which is a prepaid card. You get emirates like discounts in the city and in the airport! About 50aed approx! Got my folks to get it and they had 400 off dinner in Atlantis! How bad!! DXB connect card!
Don't shoot the messenger!!

The import duty on all consumer goods into the UAE is 5%...

The booze is cheap.:ok:

A bit off thread, but i found jewelry and watches prices to be quite interesting in GCM, short hop from US anyway.
AA Tickets on top you might still get a nice deal...

Bought an iPhone 4 a year ago in a Muscat shopping mall. 15% cheaper than DXB Duty Free store. :cool:

A friend bought a camera in DXB 'duty free' a few weeks ago - against my advice. She got home to South Africa and found it 25% cheaper in a normal retail outlet.