Import fee warning!!!

[Darryl]

Yes, the government loves their taxes. Really sorry about that, I think Spain has higher tax than some other EU Countries. It feels unfair, but I guess we can only vote for what we want, and hope to benefit from the tax money we pay. It is also unfair to the makers selling product from outside the EU because we could sell more NDLRs in Europe if the import tax was not so high. Its protectionism, they don't want you to buy our stuff.
In the future we will look at providing our products through retail channels, we are starting to experiment with it in the USA, but its time consuming and we are not yet big enough to hire someone to own it. We have to focus on making more products to get big enough to get help for things like marketing and retail sales. Someday soon we hope.

Hi. I bought my NDLR unit just days ago also from Spain and had the very same experience. I end up paying 136 € more, which I detail below.

Spain has a 21% VAT tax, which is a thing, but not the highest in EU. That's ~69 €. There's some other customs tax for +17 €. Total, 86 euros in customs. However what increases the price unexpectedly is the delivery agency (in my case DHL) which charged +50,11€  for customs formalities, that is, an administrative fee, not a government tax. IMO this is a total scam and an abuse of power (you have no chance to negotiate it or can't really do anything if you want your delivery). Just pay or give up.

My suggestion for Conductive Labs would be to check if is there any another post service in Europe that does not charge so much for this basic procedure. I already have my NDLR, but I'm sure many other users could get benefit of it

Edit: worths mention that, apart of the mentioned fee, DHL worked out very well, and the delivery was really fast. I was expecting a longer delivery time for something traveling from HK

Wow, I am truly sorry about that big fee from DHL. We did not know it was so much. I don't know if there are other reasonable alternatives to DHL. We had complaints about FedEx fees when we were using them. The lowest cost would probably be with HK Post, but its takes much longer to arrive. We tried other low cost carriers, but there were customs problems, lost packages, and they were slow (WNDirect, Aramex). These cheaper shippers do not handle the last mile to the customer, they give the parcel to the local post office for final delivery. This makes it difficult to track and you have to deal directly with customs to pay before it will be delivered. 

In the future, we plan to move NDLR sales to our own ecommerce store where the customer will get to choose the preferred shipping method, and can pre-pay duty and VAT. Its always best to know the total cost upfront, and Indiegogo isn't a great "store" for that reason.

[jrayon]

Yaeh, and note that this 50 € fee is on top of the delivery expenses, which were paid to indiegogo beforehand. That’s why it’s so scamming. But I understand your point and the ecommerce sounds like a good idea.

[PDofCC]

Hi Darryl - an update.  It's incredibly hard to follow up on a shipment with DHL.  Customer Service is another name for a department that simply gives you other departments to call, invariably the wrong ones.  After 5 calls I reached the DHL Customer Accounts department who confirmed that the surcharges are due to a discrepancy in the shipper's declared value and the amount paid to Indiegogo.  On pressing for the actual numbers, it seems that this may be due solely to currency exchange variations, and the difference is only a few GBP (all dealings with Indiegogo are in USD, but all UK customs valuations are in GBP).  The adviser I eventually spoke to has opened an enquiry into the surcharge and I am promised they will get back to me in 3-5 working days.  Watch this space!

Sorry to read that other European NDLRs are also being hit by the DHL surcharges, but it may be worth challenging them.  As mentioned above I persisted with DHL and eventually got through to the UK customer accounting department where I queried the reason for the surcharge, which was cited as a Post Clearance Modification surcharge, allegedly because the shipment value declared by the Hong Kong supplier differed from the amount invoiced to (i.e. paid by) me. I sent them a copy of my receipt as evidence.  In fact both values were identical, in USD, but the GBP equivalents were calculated at different times and there was a small difference due to currency exchange rate fluctuations.  I protested that the “amendment” surcharge was unfair as the correct valuation was in USD and this was absolutely consistent between the supplier declared value and my payment amount.  An enquiry was opened by DHL and I heard today that I will receive a full refund of the GBP45 surcharge.  It took a lot of patience and a total of 7 calls, but was worth it in the end!  Maybe it would be worth investigating alternative international shipping agents?  Anyway, I was relieved to resolve the issue and in the meantime The NDLR is proving to be well worth its cost, with or without a surcharge! A great piece of kit - congratulations to Conductive Labs.

[Darryl]

I heard back from Easyship who contacted DHL on our behalf. They really had no explanation due to not knowing the specific circumstances. They said you would have to talk to the DHL office in the receiving Country. I suspect that PDofCC's message above might be an good example of what can generate this extra charge. I really don't know what we can do about currency fluctuations, the customs dept. should be expecting such minor discrepancies when calculating exchange rates.

[Darryl]

Regarding our shipping agents... for anyone interested, this is how we ship our product. If someone is looking to ship their products, let us know if you have questions about our experience. We'd be happy to help.

We use Easyship.com to purchase postage. There are other similar postage sellers, but Easyship has rich eCommerce integrations, free plug-ins for your web site, and lots of carrier choices (depending on source and destination). You use their carrier accounts, so you get a high volume shipper pricing discount. They have 24/7 customer support that are typically very helpful. The downside is, using Easyship's carrier accounts means we don't have a direct relationship with the carrier. We have to go through Easyship for issues.

Depending on destination, we get a list of available carriers to choose from. We typically select DHL, as they are fast, have detailed tracking, they handle customs issues and (usually) have a reasonable cost. We've had other, cheaper carriers loose packages, and often those carriers do not deliver the last mile, they hand the parcel over to the local post office which makes it hard to track. FedEx also charges fees for handling customs issues, and charge a surcharge for residential addresses.

Once we purchase postage, our fulfillment warehouse gets the order, they are integrated with Easyship. The fulfillment warehouse prints the shipping docs generated by Easyship, sticks it on the box, then waits for the carrier to pick them up. The carrier is automatically notified to pick up the parcels through Easyship integration. So Easyship is really the only one we have to deal with most of the time. We have a contract with the fulfillment warehouse, and pay the warehouse for receiving fees, storage fees, and fees for boxing up and shipping our product.

We ship from Hong Kong, which is where most of the major warehouse fulfillment companies are based. By shipping from Hong Kong, we don't have the extra expense and time of getting our product shipped to the USA when more than half of NDLR orders are not from USA. And we don't have to pay USA's China tariffs. Hong Kong is a duty free port, which is why all the warehouse logistics companies are there.

Further reading: https://www.chinaimportal.com/blog/fulfi...hong-kong/

[poundies]

I live in the UK, and i have just received a note from DHL RE: TAX & SHIPPING. The Shipper is Sunny Access, not the other one you mentioned.
Total pans out to a bill of £70 on top of cost of NDLR.

Basically, anyone that lives in the UK to be aware of this additional cost.

regards

[afrozack]

I live in the UK, and i have just received a note from DHL RE: TAX & SHIPPING.  The Shipper is Sunny Access, not the other one you mentioned.
Total pans out to a bill of £70 on top of cost of NDLR.

Basically, anyone that lives in the UK to be aware of this additional cost.

regards

I just had the same, but had it saved as saw earlier posts.

[poundies]

I live in the UK, and i have just received a note from DHL RE: TAX & SHIPPING.  The Shipper is Sunny Access, not the other one you mentioned.
Total pans out to a bill of £70 on top of cost of NDLR.

Basically, anyone that lives in the UK to be aware of this additional cost.

regards

I just had the same, but had it saved as saw earlier posts.

I will 'suck it up' as my NDLR is meant to arrive tomorrow.  I will keep you posted.  good luck.

[Oldgoat]

I got mine at the start of the week with a charge of £70
Seems that I was lucky

[Pop Alexandra]

I got mine at the start of the week with a charge of £70
Seems that I was lucky

Indeed. I guess it depends a lot on the local taxes. A shame that many people payed hefty brokerage taxes, though.
________________________________
Alexandra from https://w2c.ca/
Customs training