Mobile phone woes
I bought a Sony Eriksson W500i mobile when on my travels at Dubai ariport. It was on a 9 hour stopover from Capetown to Antalya in Turkey and I was bored and could believe how cheap the prices were so I went for it. It cost 220 dollars, which wasn’t bad for airport shopping.
Two weeks after using it in Turkey I had an SMS message telling my that the mobile wasn’t registered in Turkey and I would have to pay 5 Lira to do so. Not bad I thought, but when I went to the Turkish telecomm office I was told I needed some paperwork from customs.
To get that paperwork I would have to pay import tax at 100%, a fee and I’d need to buy a license because the phone comes with a (crappy) in-built radio. the whole process is going to double the price of the phone.
Anyway, there are two things here. Dubai must be an incredibly cheap country to buy electronics and you should save up before going on holiday there. Secondly, if you’re unfortunate enough like me to live in Turkey, an airport purchase could end up costing double the list price!