"The Forth Deck" portable computer (smell of HP71B Forth)

[HP67]

(08-01-2023 08:12 AM)vaklaff Wrote:  Because of the mention of closing up and firing, I strongly suspect that that "here" is my "here" as well - the Czech republic.

Correct! Ahoj

(08-01-2023 08:12 AM)vaklaff Wrote:  I avoid buying from outside the EU as well, with very very rare exceptions.

Yes, my Czech friends have many horror stories in addition to the ones I experienced.

Interestingly, the Chinese and Hong Kong business people are getting very creative. I bought some electronics from ebay recently. Ebay now collects VAT for us and gives an itemized receipt/invoice which Czech Customs accepts in the case we have to submit the paperwork online. Item price, shipping price, VAT paid etc. are shown as required, with a German ebay entity IOSS number as the VAT collector.

But the new twist is that some of these shops ship the package to Luxembourg or some other EU country where their people handle the importation paperwork. Then it gets sent to me via PPL like a normal package from inside CR. Not everybody is on board yet but it's nice that smart shops realize if they help with this everybody wins.

Unfortunately it's impossible to know ahead of time which shops have such good logistics. But when I find one, he gets my business the next time.

The bad news is that ebay seems to have discontinued the GSP (prepaid everything and customs handling as mentioned above with the Chinese/Hong Kong shops) which used to arrive without paperwork via GLS here. It was expensive but at least there were no surprises or aggravation. ebay changed to an "international shipping program" which doesn't handle things well and uses Czech Post.. so, almost back to the old bad days unless you get lucky and find sellers with good logistics.

https://english.radio.cz/more-layoffs-cz...en-8790184