Toshiba TLP-LV3 replacement lamp for TLP-S10 beamer

David Hausheer

Recently, I had to replace the lamp of my Toshiba TLP-S10 beamer, that got broken after less than a year. I looked up the price for the replacement lamp TLP-LV3 in toppreise.ch, a price comparison tool for product offers in Switzerland. The cheapest price I got was CHF 590.50 plus forwarding expenses, which was about half of the price I paid for the beamer. I checked further offers using Google, but it turned out that CHF 590.50 was really about the cheapest offer I could get in Switzerland.

So I started looking up offers from US-based retailers, using PC World's Product Finder and Froogle. The cheapest offer I could get now was $175.62 plus shipping costs, which was less than half the price!

Unfortunately, some of the retailers listed were only shipping to the US and Canada. So I had to make sure that I would find a retailer which offers international shipping and accepts international credit cards.

The next cheapest retailer I found that fulfilled these requirements and had good reviews was NextWarehouse. So I ordered the lamp there for $186.74 plus $55.28 shipping costs (International priority delivery with FedEx).

I received the replacement lamp exactly 3 (!) working days after I ordered it. About two weeks after I got an invoice of CHF 33.95 for the duty, thus alltogether the lamp cost me:

CHF 241.25 Retailer price CHF 71.40 Shipping costs CHF 33.95 Duty ------------------------- CHF 346.60 Total price

Thus I paid almost half the price that I would have had to pay in Switzerland!