Update: I  am withdrawing my offer, and will be using ShopandBox to get the phone from Australia with fiat instead.  In the final analysis, I'm not ready to part with my precious bitcoins just yet.

On a side note, I had an interesting discussion with ShopAndBox and they seem willing to investigate adding a Bitcoin payment option.   I think it would be very complimentary to their business model, as it would also be for AirBnB, Uber and any other international person-to-person style business.

It's hard to say now whether or not using CoinsforTech or Francong with escrow would have been a better deal, but the personal service I received from ShopAndBox gave me the confidence to pull the trigger.  Trust is always an issue when buying over the internet, and especially when paying with bitcoins.   Easier to use escrow services and reputation systems would help.  Wild fluctuation in the bitcoin exchange rate also makes it harder right now to use bitcoins, but I expect that will become less of a problem over time as the market depth grows.