When you have an item such as an amp shipped from another country, it has to be processed by customs. You can authorize the shipper to act as your broker. I have this with my Fedex account for example. They prepare the customs declaration document identifying the item and pay the government any duties and taxes for you, charging it to your account or credit cad. This streamlines and takes a lot of worry out of the process. They charge a processing fee for this service but it is reasonable for an expensive item such as an amp.
If you are lucky, the seller (Matamp in this case) can arrange for and get a better rate on shipping and insurance. Matamp has done this before, ask what they recommend. There are a lot of freight options and price structures, obviously overnight is a lot more expensive. It is more difficult when you have to arrange shipping from England yourself. You have to worry about proper packaging for freight shipping and picking up the item from the seller by this third party. I always prefer to use the mail from England or Europe in general to North America. There are weight and size restrictions as to what they will accept.
One other concern. Some companies, I doubt that this applies to Matamp, do not offer a warranty for products imported from another sales zone. They to this to protect their local distributors. In these cases, if you require warranty service, you would have to have it serviced where you bought the amp, which involved expensive two way shipping and customs charges, rather than by a local authorized service centre.
