Originally Posted by Bonzo Banana

Irritating but wouldn't stop me buying Shimano and much of this has been from pressure from distributors who are losing sales because they have set a higher price for their country because of higher costs or reduced volume. Shimano seem to have a fantastic approach to cycling with some incredible value products. Their trickle down philosophy of constantly moving engineering improvements and design down the groupset hierarchy has meant even a cheap groupset like Claris delivers fantastic performance. Their engineering standards are second to none like many Japanese products.

As already pointed out you can avoid these restrictions by buying from smaller sellers who sell via Ebay or Amazon etc in different countries. There is normally always a way to save money, they have just made it a little more difficult.