Hi,
I orderer a few radio modules, for a total of 75$. Add to that the expensive DHL shipping fees to France, and it’s over 100$.
Now I just received a text from DHL saying I need to pay the import duties… of 40euros ! more than the half of the price of the order !
What the hell ??? Those radio modules are gonna cost 4 times more than others, how do you guys label them ???
that is normal.
you pay 19% of the total price incl. shipping for the import.
And dhl takes money (10-15EUR) for doing all the declaring work.
If you import things you should have read your local law about duties.
That is not Heltec s problem, they cant lower the taxers your country want to have.
My recent order of 5x cubecell dev boards from the Heltec web store had no duties or VAT applied (shipped to UK via YANWEN).
To hedge my bets due to potential Covid delays I also placed another order at a similar time from Heltec’s official Aliexpress store. That was a smaller order for one board, one module and did have a £12 charge to pay on arrival (£4 duty and an £8 Royal Mail handling charge).
Not sure what caused one order to incur charges and the other not …I also think it’s the first Aliexpress order I’ve placed which had additional charges due. The UK is fairly lax when it comes to applying customs charges on small-value items but that doesn’t explain why the smaller order had charges and not the larger.
Anyway, the charges aren’t anything within Heltec’s control so not really much they can do about it except maybe add a disclaimer to the store.
NB. Last I checked you could buy on amazon and get next day delivery if you want someone else to handle the import & VAT fees …will be more expensive though as amazon and the company doing the importing need to take their slice of the pie.
I bought my first couple of evaluation units from amazon and I think the dev-boards were £18 or something like that.
Yes it’s down to the country receiving the goods. In the Uk the charges can start when the amount of value declared and a nori always amount for postage exceed £ 15. Then subject to charges. Which are based on value and include a custom charge and VAT (there is a starting value for this) and then the customs handling charge £ 8 Royal Mail typically £10-£12 for others. The key is the amount declared on package customs form though if customs think it may not be value stated they will open if they think it is worth there time 
. I often just make several small orders and they are fine 1/2 boards. Simon