Keysight Scope Giveaway

[nctnico]

I'm afraid not and I'm not sure the Starbucks credits can be used in the EU. I recently saw an American couple's Starbucks card was declined in Switserland.

[stmdude]

This is a joke, right? I hope?

EU customs duties is not a joke.. Or, well, it is, depending on your perspective..

I'd be very surprised if this is a joke. Sounds very much as par for the course.

[continuo]

At least when you have to pick it up yourself, you are not worry about paying any taxes.

And it's also a great way for the distributor to save some shipping costs 

[nihtila]

Customs and those low value limits are nuisance but it is the courier fees making these cases ridiculous, there should be some regulations to forbid those. In Finland (I am Finnish) I had an option with DHL to declare a parcel myself or let them do it. If they do it, of course it costs although it still was not that much. But this is 2 years ago.

Now after living in the UK for 18 months, I am still not completely aware how things go here. I have only ordered PCBs from China, and also noticed DHL just adding their fees - no options. Last time I chose FedEx, no fees (and no customs either?), and at least I haven't seen an invoice yet. I have ordered stuff from Mouser few times but those always go smoothly.

[AndyC_772]

Mouser pay duties and taxes upfront, so there's nothing more to pay when the parcel lands in the EU. Just tick the box for free FedEx shipping.

[Howardlong]

Now after living in the UK for 18 months, I am still not completely aware how things go here. I have only ordered PCBs from China, and also noticed DHL just adding their fees - no options. Last time I chose FedEx, no fees (and no customs either?), and at least I haven't seen an invoice yet. I have ordered stuff from Mouser few times but those always go smoothly.

It depends on the circumstances, and each carrier/supplier combo frequently have different setups.

As an example for Fedex/Mouser, they use a notional address in (ISTR) Cologne (EU) so it behaves as if it were shipped from an EU country.

If you're VAT registered and supply Mouser with your VAT ID then they will supply the good as if they come from Cologne, i.e., any invoiced VAT amount will be zero.

If you're retail customer, VAT will be added to your bill, and due at check out.

This is just the way Mouser have it setup.

Not many smaller outfits have such arrangements, but in general if there's duty or taxes to be paid Fedex go after it after delivery, whereas the likes of UPS and most other carriers won't deliver until they've received payment. DOn't ignore the Fedex invoice either, they will refer it to a debt collection agency after a couple of months or so.

[Howardlong]

Mouser pay duties and taxes upfront, so there's nothing more to pay when the parcel lands in the EU. Just tick the box for free FedEx shipping.

When I received a scope from the Keysight eBay store a few months ago, shipped from Malaysia, the eBay invoice was recalculated with VAT added, apparently this is a standard Incoterms process "Delivered Duty Paid" (DDP). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms

[twentyseven.]

Hey guys,
is this the Keysight scope month 2016 winners club?   

I just got my scope today. Lucky for me, a sales representative came to my house.
He struggled a bit entering a private living space (removing shoes or not) and sitting with him in my living room was a bit strange. Maybe this was due to the fact, that I have all of my electronic-related stuff in the hackerspace and nothing at home.
He also ask me, if I am somehow related to electronics and if I know what an Oscilloscope is.
I should have known that "Yeaah, I saw the youtube-video where some guys tried to do a BBQ with it" ( ) was definitely not the right answer in this situation - my fault.
Then it tooks me some time to convince him, but in the end I got this nice scope (and his card if I have any further questions).

For testing this 1-GHz beast, the best thing I could find at home is a 433MHz remote for powersockets.
I am using the "store waveform"-function to see the two different patterns for knob A and B  in one picture (sorry for the bad quality, who need groundclips?).

And last but not least: Thanks to all people involved into the scopelottery and to Dave for the decent hints. 

[KE5FX]

"Yeaah, I saw the youtube-video where some guys tried to do a BBQ with it" ( )

Are they giving away the marketing guy's Cayman, too?   

[continuo]

I've constantly sales reps ringing at my door. Unfortunately they're either from Vorwerk, wanting to sell insanely priced vacuum cleaners to me or some Jehova's witnesses who promise eternal life in exchange for my soul. The one from Keysight has yet to show up. Sigh, maybe next year... 

[valgamaa]

Key sight sent me a free mug for having an article published that used their software. The declared value was 34 Cents above the EU duty threshold, so the free mug cost me 43 Euros in duty+handling fees. Not sure I can afford to publish any more articles!

This is a joke, right? I hope?

It's no joke, but as others said the problem is that the couriers add silly amounts of handling fees on the deliveries. I was able to use the Starbucks card in San Francisco last week, and it is quite a nice mug (goes well next to my Rohde and Schwarz one!).

[Keysight DanielBogdanoff]

Are they giving away the marketing guy's Cayman, too?   

I just asked the owner (not me, sadly). He said **** no. Nice try!

[tszaboo]

"Yeaah, I saw the youtube-video where some guys tried to do a BBQ with it" ( )

Are they giving away the marketing guy's Cayman, too?   

Looks almost as ridiculous as the feature list I get to some projects.

[wraper]

They valued the mug at 15 Dollars, and included a Starbucks card with 10 Dollars of credit. This equated to 22.34 Euros, and therefore liable for local charges. It was the courier minimum charges that bumped things up so much. I have to say that I'm confused by the Brexit comments though - how would that change the need to make a customs declaration, let alone in another country!

The couriers minimum charges did not kick in until they had to go through the ordeal of calculating the 4 EUR VAT for you.

That isn't true. A customs declaration is required for all goods entering a country (but the UK is pretty lax at applying this - even as an EU member), and for this DHL charge 25 Euros. They then charge 10 Euros to administer something else (I can't remember), charge VAT on this, then charge the VAT on the goods. So something like 41 Euros is what DHL charge, even for an empty box, marked as a gift.

I refuse to pay a cent to DHL, therefore drive to the customs and deal with them myself and pay no other fees than VAT. Though it's a waste of 2 hours of time because Customs are located just out of the city.

[KE5FX]

Looks almost as ridiculous as the feature list I get to some projects.

What does?  The Cayman?!

[timofonic]

No Spain? We are all Europe and near France :*

[nihtila]

My "crazy" weekend alone when the better half is away 

So yes, the prize scope is in use here as well. I have been mostly designing audio stuff recently. Unfortunately scope has no use in performance measurements but of course it has its place in debugging, sanity checks, and especially in digital audio what I have been designing recently. This is a DAC design. It works and performance seems very good in initial tests (measured with Audio Precision at work - lucky me). However, there are something to investigate in reset circuit and power up sequencing. I was just using the digital channels and I2S decoding for the first time in my scope, I am checking some unexpected behaviour of the SPDIF receiver.

[bitseeker]

I like the way you arranged your power supplies, staggered and at an angle.

[nihtila]

I like the way you arranged your power supplies, staggered and at an angle.

It is a bit of a challenge to have one desk to serve all kinds of purposes but it works ok at the moment. Of course when I have some measurements going on, there is not much space for anything else.

This was taken when I got the scope. So basically my lab is one decent soldering iron (Metcal), two cheap rubbish Chinese power supplies, and ridiculously expensive scope And two cheap portable DMMs. Plus basic hand tools, mostly SMD components, and some basic connectors etc. I don't collect and store loads of old stuff but order components what I need when designing something. Keeps the "lab" compact, kind of necessity when living in a flat in a city.

[bitseeker]

The scope balances out the rest. 

[Flanbix]

Finally got my precious, with the app bundle too.
A great replacement for my hacked DS1054z.
Thank you everyone at Keysight for this great scope 

[LeonV]

Oh man, seeing all you get your scopes is making me jealous! (I am a winner too, with a growing list of experiments)

I really hope that Keysight is doing well out of that promotion! I remember watching the videos an only seeing a couple hundred views and did rough math to come to the conclusion that Keysight were giving away way much more than they will get in sales.

Awesome to see other winners are getting their scopes!

When is Power Supply Month? And Current Load Month for that matter ? 

[tautech]

Oh man, seeing all you get your scopes is making me jealous! (I am a winner too, with a growing list of experiments)

I really hope that Keysight is doing well out of that promotion! I remember watching the videos an only seeing a couple hundred views and did rough math to come to the conclusion that Keysight were giving away way much more than they will get in sales.

Awesome to see other winners are getting their scopes!

When is Power Supply Month? And Current Load Month for that matter ? 

Welcome to the forum.

Well done  ya lucky bugger.

We'll want to see pics.

[Brumby]

Yep - Pics or it didn't happen.

[nihtila]

When is Power Supply Month? And Current Load Month for that matter ? 

I am waiting for the Audio Analyzer Month! May need to wait a while