First off I have read all the other posts mentioning importing or tax, this is mainly to bring in the info all into one place whilst fielding questions from others(I have a couple too).
UK shipping fees: The shipping fee for the basic model is $495 due to weight and size(its huge and heavy boxed up). Add an air filter or ordering pro puts the price up double as the air filter is packaged seperately and is about the same size when packaged(calculated on volume more than weight). {Dan I expect quite a few international guys would be more interested in having an air filter and or pro(or even a basic if they didnāt notice the shipping difference between an air vs. no air, I nearly didnāt!) if you can find a way to make the shipping box for a pro or basic+air a tad bigger to fit the air filter in. Alternatively more pro units would likely get ordered if you do an option without the air filter due to shipping costs]
Import Tax: Currently this is all upto ourselves to handle as Glowforge doesnāt have the resources to organise pre-payment for import tax/duty. I am trying to make them more aware/ open to us all pre-paying for our tax so we donāt get a nasty surprise of handling fees/fines. I used Duty calculator to calculate how much it might be and for basic it is looking around Ā£416.61 and I donāt know about you guys I donāt want to pay a penny more due to fines etc. let alone the delay of customs āhandlingā this for us.
Voltage: Dan has said Glowforge will have a dual voltage PSU for 110/220v and 50/60Hz {Dan can you confirm the 220v mode will be within tolerance for use in the UK, UK vs. EU voltage}
shipping bright ideas: Dan has said many times they donāt have the resources to handling our shipping on a one to one basis so we canāt go expecting them to do freight shipping etc. but I have heard some people discussing thing like shipping to a US drop address and getting it imported properly to the UK. I havenāt researched this or any other alternatives(we canāt go picking our own delivery company from direct from glowforge to us), but if you have please chime in to tell us how much you expect to pay.
Thanks for pulling this together, @jacktyler_co_uk. To answer your question, our power supply is designing for world voltages, so it should be good for 100-240 VAC.
Eeek, Ā£416 UK Import duty for the basic, Iām starting to get worried that I reserved a Proā¦ So I also added $500 shipping, and Ā£umpty for the Import. Discussions with Wifey may be required!
That is definitely a good conversatio to have. The import tax will be double. And you may end out paying handling fees/;delays twice due to the Pro having the air filter I believe they plan to ship that when it is ready separate to the main GF pro. So I believe you could be seeing a total landed cost of over $6000 if shipping to the UK or europe.
@ihermit2: Weāve got a standard female connector like those used on the back of desktop PCs. We may not be able to include the right cable/plug, but those should be widely available locally for a few dollars. The important part is that the power supply itself can handle world voltages & frequencies, so you donāt need to buy a transformer.
Sounds like a good old fashioned āKettle Leadā Iāve got a million of those knocking about and as dan said you can pick them up easy from amazon, hardware shop or just about any IT/electronics shop. Glad you picked that connector as we can easilly get longer ones if we need to position the GF away from a plug, and no need for an ethernet or usb cable too thanks to the wifi!
@jacktyler_co_uk you mention pre paying import/tax to stop any fines and hold ups? Do you have any information on how this process works? in the same situation as you, air filter and basic heading to the UK. Wallet is hammered
Not yet, I am trying to get @dan to help us out in this area. At minimum it would be great if we could be given the details of our shipping with fedex or UPS when they are planning to ship it and we can contact the company to try and arrange payment in-advance. If not we would all love the GF to set aside some time for us international guys to just calculate the tax and accept payment in advance(even if they offload the work to the shipping company itself) it will save us all a world of pain. But they are busy men(and ladies)
I know with other things I have backed there has been big fees with importing(%ly not big Ā£Ā£Ā£, I donāt usually spend thousands on things!, for example some kick starters had Ā£60+ in import taxes/fees when going to Brazil, Mine was only Ā£18 or something for a Ā£80 bit of hardware. I would imagine any fines would be effectively negligible for the GF but the tax itself could be a killer if you arenāt expecting it). If I hear anything about this I will update the original post.
We just sent a package to our daughter who is going to school in the UK, and the shipping company actually just handled the import process, and as part of that, they requested the duty payment from my daughter. The package was delivered to her the very next day, so there was very little delay (I think it was about 4 days total from Calgary to Newcastle). Of course, this was a very different package size involved, and for a laser cutter, there may be additional hoops to jump through, and it might even be different from a non-commonwealth country, but I would suspect the process would be similar; the shipping companies do this all the time, and I would like to think that part of their exorbitant shipping fees goes towards paying for that service!
