Delivery record

[rprosperi]

(08-01-2020 01:49 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  And vice-versa too. Jörg (from datamath.org) offered some nice and interesting calculators for sale during the last weeks, but shipping charges from the US to Germany (+ import duty which is raised on the sum of article price + shipping) would have nearly doubled the price. I also wonder why shipping to and from the US is so much more expensive than from anywhere else.

Probably mostly because it's a lot further away. Is it much less to ship to Mexico or Canada?

As for Import and Customs duties, I guess you'd have to ask the German Government. When buying goods from outside US, there is no charge for either for anything under $200, and the few items I've bought from overseas that cost over that, even though declared correctly, also had no charges.

Shipping charges from US to Germany have not changed since the Pandemic; as noted above, things slowed (a lot) initially, but my recent shipments there were delivered within the 12-14 day time-frame that they used to be. One shipment to Netherlands made it in 8 days.

I also understand from several people that paying roughly twice in Germany what an item costs in US is about average and has been for some time, due to the generally higher prices there. Is that not correct?

(08-01-2020 01:49 PM)Maximilian Hohmann Wrote:  The contrary is China where sellers do not charge shipping at all in most cases (this must somehow be subsidised by the state to boost exports I suspect) and shipping times seems to be shorter now than pre-Covid. 10 to 14 days for my latest purchases. I also bought some stuff in former eastern block countries recently (Moldova and Ukraine) and the stuff arrived within a week at very reasonable charges and no import duty.

China certainly does subsidize shipping for companies under a certain size; possibly some for larger companies too, but I'm not sure.

One amazing deal I got was purchasing a set of test leads for a DMM. They came from China and cost 0.97 USD, with shipping included. I just had to buy it; it was worth a buck to see if they ever showed up. And they did, in about 3 weeks, and they worked fine (for cheap leads).

I have read that shipping times for some items is completely back to normal, while for other items is still severely delayed. I personally think the damage to China's infrastructure done by COVID-19 is far worse than they admit, thus affecting these items that aren't moving. But I'm a conspiracy theorist sometimes...