Water Cooler > General OpenPOWER Discussion

European logistics / delivery, warranty returns, etc

(1/3) > >>

pocock:
There are a few comments about this topic in other threads (search for Europe to find them) but I thought it is worth having its own thread.

To summarize the problems:

- delivery from the US means longer delay, higher shipping costs and uncertain administrative charges at customs clearance

- if a product has to be returned under warranty, there are extra taxes in each direction, on top of the extra shipping cost and delay

- if a product being returned is completely dead on arrival or subsequently failed beyond repair, it is a horrendous waste of money to pay more taxes for a round-trip through customs

- overall, the type of person who buys this product is probably an experienced user who is aware of all these risks and may be deterred from purchasing

There are other products with similar challenges, for example, the LimeSDR.  In their case, it is even worse, because they are based in the UK, they asked Europeans to support them in crowdfunding but they decided to outsource all shipping to a US company:
https://discourse.myriadrf.org/t/shipping-from-europe/310

Here is why the issue is really important for OpenPOWER:

- most EU countries have a single market and there is a possibility the UK will participate in the single market after Brexit.

- Switzerland is not in the single market but some logistics companies have been very effective at setting up customs-bonded warehouses near the border and they can deliver into either the EU or Swiss markets without extra burden.  Example: Basel (CH) airport is actually on French territory, in the EU.

- a lot of the developers on related projects are in the European countries.  Looking at the Raptor wiki, the Firefox and Tor issues are on the front page, both of these groups have a lot of people in Europe.

What can be done about this, for the OpenPOWER products but also for other products like LimeSDR?

Please feel free to share any ideas

MPC7500:
If you live within the EU you can also order Raptor products through Vikings. You just have to send them an email.

pocock:
I didn't see anything about this when interacting with sales or when looking at the order page

When I do a search for Vikings on all raptorcs.com it only returns one link:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Araptorcs.com+vikings
=> https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/Events

If choices like this are not obvious to purchasers then some people won't look for them, they will simply leave the site without any purchase.

It would also be helpful if you can clarify:
- is Vikings responsible for support, warranty, etc?
- does this also serve Switzerland and potentially the post-Brexit UK?

A web search for Vikings doesn't always return anything useful as it is a very generic word.  Vikings web site:
https://vikings.net/

vikings.thum:
Wanted to let everybody know that we've placed our first order with RaptorCS today. Once the products arrive here we'll take the listings in our store live.  :)

ClassicHasClass:
Excellent! Will that extend to RMAs as well?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page