European tentative buyers for Elecrow beware: my personal negative experience

[ironcurtain]

Hello,

I recently ordered a bunch of prototypes from Elecrow, after reading the (mostly by North Americans) stellar reviews of their manufacturing service for small batches and looking at their prices. As far as production goes, they deliver fantastically. After a while, which was not necessarily the most timely I have dealt with (it was reasonably slow but not terrible), they sent photos of the boards and notified of shipping.

Here's where the gongshow/gagfest begins. I selected, assuming they would use HK Post or similar, their DHL Shipping as it was their cheapest. DHL tends to work wonderfully within the EU but in Spain and Finland it has been brought to attention that they were scamming customers and committing text book fraud with their import duties handling. I will elaborate:

• In Spain, individuals importing goods under 150 EUR are not to be taxed for import duties. This is not the VAT, but actual customs import duties as defined by law/import codes.
• VAT is only applicable for a total value including shipping of 22 EUR and up. This means, that if the commercial value of the goods is zero, they might actually go full-on rodent and attempt to claim fees nonetheless.
• DHL Spain (and Finland until they were fined and shot down for it) will charge you 18 to 30 EUR for their "agent" handling of the process... which can be done online AT ZERO cost directly with the tax agency website. They will not alert you beforehand, or ask if you wish to retain their agent services, and they denied me any papers in writing declaring their fees (which amounted up to 200% of the actual value of the baords!)
• When using HK Post or DHL relying on the publicly owned, government-run post office (think USPS, Royal Mail, etc), they will never attempt to tax individuals for import duties, and only VAT when applicable, which for PCB boards there is no end consumer product to sell... therefore they are not taxable that way. DHL Spain is a franchise using the DHL brand but with entirely different management, and they have routinely attempted this. Elecrow screwed up and included my company's name (from the US) which DHL Spain attempted to exploit for charging me as a corporation (there are no LLCs in Europe, and it was obvious the recipient was an individual and there was no involvement of the company beyond billing).
• After a very unpleasant conversation with them, which I recorded, I informed them of the law and told them to either provide all the paperwork and tentative bills explaining their import duties, agent charges, etc. Their response was a feeble attempt to transfer me to customer service, arguing the imports department could not handle the request (so you have the bill and paperwork right in front of you but you can't send that through e-mail directly and need to divert the customer to general customer service, which will just refer the case back to you?
   HEH)
• After all this, I wrote an e-mail to Elecrow and they more or else ignored these claims, the information provided, and passively mentioned that if I had the package returned I would be billed additional shipping fees for the return shipping AND and any subsequent shipping and handling (despite them making mistakes in their customs declaration and using DHL despite informing them that they would cause trouble and that HK Post or anyone else would be a better option).

I'm still waiting for a response from Elecrow and I can put what I sent them here. I will comment on some issues later on, but for now, for those of you in Europe thinking to order from Elecrow, be very careful unless your local DHL/FedEx already got a good bitchslapping from the government to stop ripping people off.

Needless to say, the work I wanted to put on these boards, which were not of commercial value, has been put on hold and I can't build the gift I was going to work on this Xmas (a Nintendo console cart reader for multiple systems).

[rea5245]

It sounds to me as if your beef is mainly with DHL and European taxes. Also, wouldn't these issues apply to any PCB manufacturer shipping to Europe via DHL, and not just Elecrow? Why single out Elecrow?

- Bob

[JPortici]

I've had issues with elecrow (with assembly) but they always corrected their mistakes.
And that's why i still use them even if they increased their prices, i know that i can expect a good service.
this? this is not elecrow's problem. this is what DHL and every other courier do to end customers, they all do this shit and elecrow has nothing to do with elecrow.

my last pcb order was carried by TNT. a 36$ package had 38$ extra between duties and TNT tax + VAT on TNT tax. those bastards.

[wraper]

this is what DHL and every other courier do to end customers, they all do this shit and elecrow has nothing to do with elecrow.

Did you read it? Because of incorrect invoice, DHL wants to push their customs broker service on him as if he was a company.

[ironcurtain]

It sounds to me as if your beef is mainly with DHL and European taxes. Also, wouldn't these issues apply to any PCB manufacturer shipping to Europe via DHL, and not just Elecrow? Why single out Elecrow?

- Bob

I think the part describing how Elecrow is basically offloading the whole problem on me was sufficiently clear in my original post, isn't it? If you actually read the message you will see I have no issue with EU taxes, or DHL itself, but the Spanish privately managed franchise, their mafia-esque illegal handling of agent (non EU taxes, that was pretty clear too: their own "handling" fee to do paperwork that is essentially FREE, is more than twice the actual worst possible VAT of the items, besides erroneous calculation of import duties which are not applicable to begin with, as I am not a company).

So far no responses from Elecrow other than a "if you return the item it's on you to ship it again and pay whatever DHL charges us for returning it". I will keep this thread open to any and all people from the EU who had similar issues.

Once again, this WILL NOT happen when the selected courier is HK Post, or the Chinese post office, and as much as I wanted to avoid it... yes, they can absolutely "engineer" a customs declaration that is still legal but yields no opportunity for extra fees. The EU post offices do not charge agent fees typically, and they don't f*ck up the import duties on purpose. In Spain at least only companies are subject to import duty, and individuals when it is well above 150 EUR, but this is debatable, since the duties depend on the classification and import code used. ex. test equipment is not the same as parts for test equipment.

I got a replacement front unit for a CDMA test-set from Israel that I paid no taxes for, as I shouldn't, but paid them for the working full unit, from the same sender. Elecrow screwed up in their own way, and they are failing to give proper customer service. DHL Spain just did what they do best: rip people off. Yanks don't have these issues since technically your post office/USPS doesn't give a damn most of the time unless you are sending narcotics.

This is an article about the private company handling the post office customs long ago, before widespread reported abuse got them shot down:

https://www.elconfidencial.com/espana/2016-01-17/quejas-confusion-y-denuncias-de-fraude-en-los-controles-de-correos-en-barajas_1136538/

[rea5245]

So am I correct that if Elecrow had left your company name off of the customs declaration, you would've been OK? Alternatively, if you had selected HK Post or China Post, you would've been OK?

What are you asking Elecrow to do? Are you asking them to take financial responsibility for this because they put your company name on the package? Or are you asking them to fill out extra paperwork? Sorry if I'm being slow on the uptake here, but this situation is unfamiliar to me.

BTW, I'm surprised that you said DHL was the cheapest. At least when shipping to the US, HK Post is like $5 and DHL is like $28. But DHL is 3-5 days and HK Post is ~15 days. Is it different to Spain?

- Bob

[BBBbbb]

Note sure if it was clear from your order not to include the company name (that they had in your profile information, I guess).


Elecrow remains one of two of my go to fabs, OSH Park being the other. They are slow but do the job, OSH is just unbeatable price-wise for some small prototype PCBs.

[wraper]

BTW, you could say them to go f.ck themselves because you will use different customs broker. So they must provide you necessary papers. Then do customs procedure as a private person  on tax agency website. At least here in Latvia it would work that way as much as I'm aware, because as a private person I upload the same papers which I would provide to the customs broker as a company. Unless tax agency will sent you to the same place where you directed DHL  .

[Towger]

Did you read it? Because of incorrect invoice, DHL wants to push their customs broker service on him as if he was a company.

Makes no difference here, company or not, but the company can offset the VAT part.  We 'The company' got stuck for about €60 for a flash drive Microsoft decided to send us with Windows 10.  It was unrequested and probably part of our MSDN subscription,  which was VAT paid anyway.  They just arrived at the door and the person who answered was told there was a package with VAT to be paid, so paid from their own pocket.  It was only afterwards we found out what it was. 
To make matters worse the drive is write protected, so it is worthless...

[wraper]

Did you read it? Because of incorrect invoice, DHL wants to push their customs broker service on him as if he was a company.

Makes no difference here, company or not, but the company can offset the VAT part.

There is a huge difference. Please read the opening post again. If you are a private person, you can deal with customs directly and don't need to pay brokerage fee which costs more than goods. I don't know about other EU countries but here in Latvia it's the same as OP wrote, you upload the papers to the tax agency website and pay VAT and duties online. If you are a company, you need to pay to customs broker.

[Towger]

Makes no difference here, company or not, but the company can offset the VAT part.

There is a huge difference.
[/quote]

The word 'here' means in this location.

[wraper]

Makes no difference here, company or not, but the company can offset the VAT part.
  There is a huge difference.

The word 'here' means in this location.

Word "here" more likely means "this tread" in given context as you can consider forum as location as well.

[rsjsouza]

So am I correct that if Elecrow had left your company name off of the customs declaration, you would've been OK? Alternatively, if you had selected HK Post or China Post, you would've been OK?

What are you asking Elecrow to do? Are you asking them to take financial responsibility for this because they put your company name on the package? Or are you asking them to fill out extra paperwork? Sorry if I'm being slow on the uptake here, but this situation is unfamiliar to me.

I have the same question here as well. I don't know Elecrow, but if the package was billed to your company and your record has the company name, I think it is fair to assume they shipped this to a company and not to an individual.

Also, when you selected the freight forwarder when making your purchase (DHL in this case), is it fair to assume that Elecrow should be aware of the whole brouhaha between DHL Spain and the global DHL company?

The questions are coming from the excerpts:
"DHL Spain (and Finland until they were fined and shot down for it) will charge you 18 to 30 EUR for their "agent" handling of the process... "

"Elecrow screwed up and included my company's name (from the US) which DHL Spain attempted to exploit for charging me as a corporation (there are no LLCs in Europe, and it was obvious the recipient was an individual and there was no involvement of the company beyond billing)."

[Towger]

Where did they get the name from?

[zeqing]

It sounds to me as if your beef is mainly with DHL and European taxes. Also, wouldn't these issues apply to any PCB manufacturer shipping to Europe via DHL, and not just Elecrow? Why single out Elecrow?

- Bob

+1. it seems a common problem that not only for Elecrow but also for other supplier in China, you can not expect the logistic worker there be an expert on this, there are more than 190 countries on the world and the policy changes a lot.... when i make orders from my vendor Makerfabs, i will make an note in the order if i have some special request such as how to declare the package, or they will ship the pakcage as my shipping address.

[ironcurtain]

I will be posting an update, Elecrow handled this quite well in the end though they have yet to respond to my email follow-up on their resolution. They offered to cover the DHL fees, which I find unfair to them.

As to what other people asked regarding using the company name: that's from PayPal. I very clearly specified a shipping address that is entirely different. I think going on a tangent when the initial post described it very well won't get us anywhere/ I might suggest a re-read of my first post and the response I wrote to one of our fellow posters here.

I also doubt, as evidenced by other people in this thread, that this is an isolated case. If they did not know the idiosyncrasies of dealing with DHL/etc in Europe before, now certainly they do. I sent them a lenghty e-mail with advice and references for the future, which I hope they take heed of, and results in much more painless (and cheaper) service to everyone else.

I had a talk with the local DHL office, calling their real line (not the pay line forward number, heh...), and recorded it, which I informed them I was doing. At some point they claimed there was an error in calculation and the fees turned out to be some 10-ish EUR cheaper than they demanded originally.  Then they claimed it would be 25 EUR and in the end charged 32 EUR at the door. I will be filing a legal complaint as soon as I have time, since they even claimed "I would pay the same" through the tax authority system (not true).

Please don't get caught up in completely sterile arguments about whether this is or isn't Elecrow's fault, I was very clear about what they did wrong, and what they did right. The boards are absolutely perfect. They need to stop using DHL/private couriers that operate in fraudulent ways and stick to HK Post or EMS. Again, I picked DHL because inside Europe, most of the time DHL is handled by the public post office, ex. from Germany. I forgot they have their own crooked private franchise for the intl side of things.

Last but not least: this forum has a high concentration of intelligent people. I think it is fair to expect a level of comprehension and understanding that if this happens to you, you are getting ripped off. Technically PCB boards in unpopulated state have zero commercial value. I won't go into a dissertation (hah) about how taxes are fair or unfair in this case, but needless to say, these companies need to stick tot he law and charge exactly what the law says, no more, no less. The fact that they do NOT provide the opportunity to already do the paperwork yourself or choose them as your customs agent is a big red flag. As an intelligent person, I struggle to see any trouble in seeing this as a gaping gagfest.