Hi Mulburg. Thank you for working with us in resolving this. Please check your inbox regarding refund. Kindly continue this conversation via email to contact@diyaudiostore.com. Thanks.
As of the time of writing this post, and since we launched our new store in 2016, all chassis that ship from Italy have the cost of shipping to the US baked into the prices. Shipping to other countries is usually a little more expensive (and sometimes a lot) and so requires a "top-up", which is what you're seeing. So yes, it is accurate.
i need help - i ordered april 26 for a whammy amp full kit and got a invoice and order confirmation , but since then nothing and its now may 3 . i emailed 2-3x about my order but no email back to me . the item i ordered was instock but i dont know whats goign on . can u guys help me out
Order #DAS-26736
Order #DAS-26736
Very sorry about this Raphael. The WHAMMY kit is unfortunately gone out of stock. You and a number of other customers have been affected. The helpdesk will be emailing you today to work out a satisfactory resolution to compensate you for your disappointment and for us not meeting your expectations on this one.
One of the things we have been wanting to address in the store is products unexpectedly being out of stock. Our warehouse provider recently changed their software which stopped our previous re-ordering and low/out-of-stock systems from working. We have (just today) finished migrating ourselves to a brand new, upgraded system that will do a much better job of forecasting and preventing out of stock situations.
My sincere apologies for this - we will do better in the future now we have the new system in place.
One of the things we have been wanting to address in the store is products unexpectedly being out of stock. Our warehouse provider recently changed their software which stopped our previous re-ordering and low/out-of-stock systems from working. We have (just today) finished migrating ourselves to a brand new, upgraded system that will do a much better job of forecasting and preventing out of stock situations.
My sincere apologies for this - we will do better in the future now we have the new system in place.
I was looking forward to the ACA kit, and you can imagine the horror when I saw DHL's fees, it's a ripoff. They do have a history of overcharging, for both shipping and duties in India.
If you see the calculation they're charging 82.3% in duties! which simply isn't correct. Individuals with Import Export Licenses are taxed at 42%.
Please consider having alternative shipping partners like EMS, they make take longer to deliver but their shipping rates are reasonable. and charge the correct applicable duties to importers.
Please email the helpdesk (contact@diyaudiostore.com), and we will obtain a custom quote for non-DDP shipping. You will then be responsible for paying the duties yourself, and as you say, you "should" be taxed at the rate you say.
We have been having trouble with the duty calculation, and actually lost many, many thousands of dollars earlier in the year due to underquoting on duty compared to what various countries actually ended up charging us. India (and Barbados) are the two most extreme countries for lumping us with rampant duty overcharges, so what you're seeing built into the price in your screenshot is a buffer to balance out the typical losses moving forward.
I agree with you that this situation has become rather untenable. As such, we are in the process of totally revamping all the stores systems and shipping methods and calculations systems, back-end inventory systems, front-end, everything.
One of the changes that will be implemented shortly is stopping offering DDP (delivered duty paid) services. We may offer it again in the future, but for now the burden on us to calculate duties and then pay whatever the destination country decides to charge us has not been working out very well for us (or, as you see, for you, when buffers are applied).
So what will happen in the near future is we will continue offering DHL Express, but not DDP. It will be DDU (Delivered Duty Unpaid), and the responsibility of duties will fall on the receiver. Now this is a bit more risky for us in some ways, because if a receiver decides to reject a package, we'll be lumped with the cost of sending the goods there, and returned back. But it's the best we can do, and if we have a significant number of returns from any particular country we will have to stop offering shipments to those countries altogether.
We have been having trouble with the duty calculation, and actually lost many, many thousands of dollars earlier in the year due to underquoting on duty compared to what various countries actually ended up charging us. India (and Barbados) are the two most extreme countries for lumping us with rampant duty overcharges, so what you're seeing built into the price in your screenshot is a buffer to balance out the typical losses moving forward.
I agree with you that this situation has become rather untenable. As such, we are in the process of totally revamping all the stores systems and shipping methods and calculations systems, back-end inventory systems, front-end, everything.
One of the changes that will be implemented shortly is stopping offering DDP (delivered duty paid) services. We may offer it again in the future, but for now the burden on us to calculate duties and then pay whatever the destination country decides to charge us has not been working out very well for us (or, as you see, for you, when buffers are applied).
So what will happen in the near future is we will continue offering DHL Express, but not DDP. It will be DDU (Delivered Duty Unpaid), and the responsibility of duties will fall on the receiver. Now this is a bit more risky for us in some ways, because if a receiver decides to reject a package, we'll be lumped with the cost of sending the goods there, and returned back. But it's the best we can do, and if we have a significant number of returns from any particular country we will have to stop offering shipments to those countries altogether.
Ha! Yes they should be consistent, but in practice, our experience shows they are not. The average amount we are overcharged (globally) compared to what would be expected for the HS code has been around 25%. And all the documentation is in the foreign language of the destination country, using complex trade terminology, often half a dozen pages of gobbledegook that never errs in our favour. I have personally spent hours and hours trawling through customs documents in foreign languages, translating terminology, and trying to make sense of it. I can't say we have had any victories, even pyrrhic ones.
We have looked into outsourcing this calculation, and there are services such as Zonos which advertise to do it, though our volume is not big enough currently for them to take us on as clients without it adding more unacceptable costs to the fees we would have to charge customers. On top of that, even paying for their services, reading feedback about Zonos' customers there are still lots of complaints about the calculations being wrong. Even a company as large as this whose full time job is this one thing can't get it right all the time. And then they do as an alternative (again if one is large enough to employ Zonos), have a product where they guarantee you (the shipper) that the fee they charge is the fee you (the shipper) pay. However, of course that fee is loaded with their own insurance premium to cover themselves against the vagaries of the final customs bills as I have described. So that insurance loading is passed to us, and then we would have to pass it on to you the purchaser.
After trying to make this work for a year now, the time involved trying to make this work has proved to be too much, as it is taking my focus away from other more important things. Adding the loading recently has resulted in unacceptably high DDP processing fees as you (and others) have found. I'm not happy with that either.
So the simple solution we be to just stop offering DDP and switch back to DDU shipping until such a solution is found that it doesn't lose us money or take our focus away from our other priorities.
Again this is not for lack of want. I'd love to offer seamless, transparent DDP for all our international shipping as an option. But as of this moment we have not found a time and cost effective way to provide this service. We are about to (actually well into) totally re-jigging all our shipping and vastly simplify the store's whole operations so we can focus on the most important things. Part of this is an overhaul of our shipping rater, and that may lead to us offering DDP services again in the future - but they will be computed externally and not internally. It's too hard to DIY on this one, despite my best efforts.
We have looked into outsourcing this calculation, and there are services such as Zonos which advertise to do it, though our volume is not big enough currently for them to take us on as clients without it adding more unacceptable costs to the fees we would have to charge customers. On top of that, even paying for their services, reading feedback about Zonos' customers there are still lots of complaints about the calculations being wrong. Even a company as large as this whose full time job is this one thing can't get it right all the time. And then they do as an alternative (again if one is large enough to employ Zonos), have a product where they guarantee you (the shipper) that the fee they charge is the fee you (the shipper) pay. However, of course that fee is loaded with their own insurance premium to cover themselves against the vagaries of the final customs bills as I have described. So that insurance loading is passed to us, and then we would have to pass it on to you the purchaser.
After trying to make this work for a year now, the time involved trying to make this work has proved to be too much, as it is taking my focus away from other more important things. Adding the loading recently has resulted in unacceptably high DDP processing fees as you (and others) have found. I'm not happy with that either.
So the simple solution we be to just stop offering DDP and switch back to DDU shipping until such a solution is found that it doesn't lose us money or take our focus away from our other priorities.
Again this is not for lack of want. I'd love to offer seamless, transparent DDP for all our international shipping as an option. But as of this moment we have not found a time and cost effective way to provide this service. We are about to (actually well into) totally re-jigging all our shipping and vastly simplify the store's whole operations so we can focus on the most important things. Part of this is an overhaul of our shipping rater, and that may lead to us offering DDP services again in the future - but they will be computed externally and not internally. It's too hard to DIY on this one, despite my best efforts.
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Unfortunately not. All the store's products are produced by our suppliers and then shipped to our warehouse as sealed, complete products. So we can only ship you what you see available on the store's sales pages and can't take apart completed products. But you might consider purchasing a product, taking out the bits you need, then selling or trading the bits you don't need on the swap meet.
The power supply board is badly in need of thermals on the components/connections that are within a copper pour or a ground plane. Easily added without compromising integrity of current capacity. Without them makes it very difficult to solder without high possibility of heating up part too much, and especially true with electrolytic and film caps.
Appreciate your concern but...been working on boards for 30+ years, have a $1000 rework station that can deliver temperatures up to 950F, and a selection of over 20 tips. What makes you think the person you're responding to does not know about soldering? Do you know what a thermal is? I didn't post my comment to have my soldering or board design skills assessed, but it was an open and positive feedback and a valid comment. Any experienced board builder will look at that board and offer the same feedback. The attached screen cap shows pads with thermals. Those 30mil thermals provide a total of 10A of current capacity on the copper weight of that board. And the devices can be soldered and removed with little problem. They can be widened up easily for higher current without impact to the solderability or added heat conduction to the part. I don't really care one way or the other if the moderator of the thread or the board designer reads this or does anything. It's here for the benefit of those people who have difficulty soldering or removing the parts and don't see why.
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