£42.44 to receive free proofgrade

Community Support
1

I’m aware that the noted price of the GF is reduced, however I didn’t think duty on the proofgrade would be so high, basically £30 duty, the rest UPS brokerage

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2

Wow, thats more expensive than I expected. Like $60 or something, right?

3

It’s because you pay vat on the landed value which includes the shipping. If you are a vat registered business you can claim that back.

4

Outch, just had to pay 52 Euro for a small pile of materials, which I am sure is more than what they cost in a hardware store. That is not a very nice gift.
So please Glowforge, for future European customers, please be more honest about the real value, and do not write 150 Euro on the invoice of the gift, but the value of the raw material instead.

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5

I don’t believe that they are allowed to do this. Might be worth giving customers the option to not have the ‘free’ materials shipped thus not incurring the cost.

7

Glowforge have said that they are going to reduce the invoice for the machine by $150 so you should get the VAT for the materials back when you get the GF. You do have to pay the brokerage twice simply because GF ship from two locations. They could send the materials to the factory and then ship it as a three part consignment to avoid that but it would cost them more.

2 Likes
8

I didn’t see that. Good to know. And a smart move by them.

I did actually check this. I paid £42.44 when mine arrived made up of £11.25 brokerage fees (UPS’s charge) and £31.19 import VAT. UK VAT is 20% and using the fx rate on my UPS invoice (.71535875) that tells me that I paid VAT on a total of $218 of value. The difference is the shipping cost which is listed but $68 sounds about right. This was confirmed when I spoke to UPS (the term they use was ‘landed value’ i.e. value plus shipping) and my accountants when I spoke to them.

Whether Glowforge could put a different amount on their export form I don’t know. Your information may be better than mine.

9

I wish we had that option. Unfortunately our compliance and logistics experts give us country-by-country requirements. We lobbied them to recommend a lower value, but to no avail.