I would say the same about Axminster too Richard. They are a little dearer than the cheapest, but not a lot on most things and deliver excellent service. More to the point a large source handling lots of stuff means that my credit card risk is minimised by not being spread all over, not to mention there's a big time saving too.
I placed some very big orders last year, and did lots of looking for good sources. But apart from one or two categories of stuff there were good savings elsewhere (like in the US on high end hand tools) or where the stuff wasn't available I still ended up buying for example almost all my power tools from them.
Stuff like good quality German made Forstners was significantly cheaper in Germany, as were Japanese chisels.
VAT (over here anyway) is the big cost when importing (which is why being registered as a business helps a lot), excise/duty (?) is usually only about 1 1/2% (but varies depending on the item) and isn't that big a deal. The cost of shipping is the other big deal, especially from the US as even the US mail services are very expensive compared to in Europe - actually very similar to the cost of a courier service.
