i’m not sure what you mean. are you simply suggesting that the chinese lasers cut enough corners to make it happen, that gf is swindling you on shipping, or…?
The Chinese don’t bother complying with safety standards. That will save them a lot of money.
US shipping cost are very high. Chinese ones are very low.
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sure. not a lot that can be done about at this stage in the game, though, with limited numbers of shipments. fwiw, shipping the big lasers from china would cost me something similar to the glowforge shipping for international customers. it is what it is.
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So Glowforge actually caring about safety and complying with the law is a bad thing? The biggest cost factor to the customer in international shipping of anything like this is costs and restrictions imposed by their own government. People are talking about tariffs, VAT, and the like. Those are being imposed by your own country. Your government has decided to increase your costs, and VAT doesn’t apply solely to imports from outside.
Yes, the costs suck, but they are not originating with Glowforge.
I originally thought this thread was about costumes.
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I’m torn two ways, leaving it be and correcting. I can see merits in both.
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Haha. I left it. I think it prepares you for the continued absurdity within
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That, and I didn’t want to be needlessly insensitive towards those form whom English is not their first language.
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Thank God my sense of humor has been restored this morning.
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No I am not complaining about the shipping cost and the VAT and I certainly don’t think ignoring safety is a good thing. I was responsible for it at the company I worked for when I was R&D manager just around the time CE became mandatory in the UK. I am just pointing out it isn’t a level playing field. Somehow the Chinese can ship things to me much cheaper than I can ship to them. And it seems I can ship to the US cheaper than US companies can ship to me.
When I sold 3D printers to the world a lot went to the USA because they got them VAT free. The shipping was a bit more but a lot less than the VAT we had to charge local customers. And US customers didn’t pay import duty on 3D printers, so they got a much better deal than local customers.
So international trade is full of unfairness and inequality.
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That is the single, best, one-sentence way to summarize and explain that.
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Agreed.
My company ships and receives worldwide, and I am amazed at the difference in just shipping cost. It costs us so much more to ship something OS, than it costs to ship something here from the same place. It baffles me every time.
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I can buy small electrical items from China, including postage, for less than the price of a second class postage stamp here. I.e. the minimum price to send a letter locally. I get an assembled PCB in an injection moulded case sent to me in a jiffy bag. How does that work?
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Not a clue.
I remember the shock the first time I shipped something OS. The cost difference between shipping it there, vs shipping it here from the same place, was amazing to me. I still don’t understand it.
A huge part of cost reduction getting from China is greatly reduced labor cost (and that they tend to ignore every patent, trademark, and copyright law out there). The country also helps specifically encourage exports while actively and aggressively discouraging imports. (The ways around Chinese import laws are truly insane.)
So they can essentially duplicate, without licensing, etc, technology on the cheap, with almost no labor cost, and pass the savings on to you. There is commensurate suffering in the quality department, of course, but what’s a little bit of failure at such a low cost?
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Yes I know all of that but how can they post a jiffy bag to me from China when I only pay 1$ for the item and the shipping? The cheapest I could send an empty packet to China would be about $3.
The postage goes through the same parties, Royal Mail and China Post, just in the opposite direction.
I suspect it goes along with the Chinese government strongly encouraging constant exports. I believe they subsidize some of the export shipping.
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I’ve been wondering about that for years. They can send small items to the US for less than I could mail it to the next city. The Chinese postal system must be heavily subsidized.
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Google “terminal dues”
I mentioned terminal dues. Here’s an excerpt from a blog on the US Postal Office of the Inspector General website. (https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/terminal-dues-review)
With the influx of ecommerce packages, especially from China, some U.S. stakeholders have complained that Chinese online retailers have an unfair advantage over their U.S. counterparts because low international shipping rates afforded by low terminal dues allow them to ship goods to the United States for less than U.S. domestic rates
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