Geert,
As a many time direct purchaser, I can say I never experienced any
horror story or great difficulty in direct orders to Elecraft shipping to
EI via UPS, who handle all paperwork and charges. I must have ordered on
ten different occasions. Me thinks you paint to grim a picture.
I prefer to deal direct with Elecraft in fact. To each their own
but again there is little need for such angst in my experience.
73 Doug EI2CN
On Wed 2 Aug 2023, 20:35 Geert Jan de Groot, <pe1...@ymbk.nl> wrote:
> On 02/08/2023 20:54, elecraft-requ...@mailman.qth.net wrote:
> > Call Elecraft and see what they tell you. Why is this not obvious?
>
> For one, it is not obvious because Elecraft does not have (and can not
> have) expertise in the complex and fast-changing world of international
> customs regulations. The post office says that this is "the
> responsibility of the receiver" even if the post office screws up, which
> often happens.
>
> Just one example: a few years ago, a small item could be sent as
> "letter" and as long as the value was low, it just went through. These
> days, anything not on paper is a "parcel", requires a boatload of
> customs administration both at the sender's (USPS won't touch it
> without) and again at the receiver's end (that means *you* doing the
> complex customs admin paperwork!), and you get to pay the post office
> for the processing of said paperwork in addition to other charges,
> customs and taxes.
>
> I also dare you to look up the costs of sending something trivial to EU
> or UK via USPS or any of the other carriers. You will not be pleased.
>
> Having had some bad experiences with self-import I can see where the
> question comes from. Having been burned before I'm gladly paying the
> markup of a local distributor even though in some cases the cost goes up
> by as much as 3dB.
>
> I have trouble with these offside remarks "just call elecraft". I dare
> you to ship something to the UK or EU, using current, recent regulations
> and see what happens.
>
> Elecraft's supply problems have been hard, very hard on DX distributors.
> A customer orders something and then the distributor is told to wait for
> a year or more on the order. For a distributor, one way to make revenue
> is to get combined orders which doesn't work for these very long, and
> unpredictable lead times.
> Meanwhile, while the customer is waiting, he may cancel the order and
> the distributor is left with very little way to make revenue. The one in
> Berlin I used to use, closed shop end of last year because the low sales
> volume made things unsustainable.
>
> As to W&S - I think there have been some major changes. Note that W&S
> didn't advertize in the RSGB RadCom magazine for several months.
> Typically these are small, one or two-person shops and if something
> happens (circumstances or health) things quickly go sour.
>
> In brief, "just call elecraft" is entirely too simple. I hope you see
> that now. And I, too, don't have a quick and easy way to order a K4 in
> the UK.
>
> Geert Jan
>
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