my secondary account. I am philipma1957
gear came . fees for 2 units = 89 usd
could be worse. I think I won't ask many questions for the time being.
That is on par with what I paid today to clear my single B3 miner. I asked the UPS agent for a breakdoen and it was a total of $46.86 mostly Customs duty and something like $3-4 for the UPS brokerage fee to process the Customs duty and import clearance.
Either the import thresholds have changed or the miner is mis-marked for shipping code.
I'd have to look up the exact code but is supposed to be for:
Electronic equipment, computer, no terminal or display
or something like that.
It also took an odd hop in Japan -- usual route is Shenzhen > Osaka > Anchorage > etc.
This time it arrived in Narita first but then left from Osaka. Er? A bit of a trek there.
FYI, I wrote to Bitmain about this and they claim that they haven't changed the shipping codes. The implication is that it's the dollar figure triggering the difference, or UPS has gotten gready.
The fact that every S9 was in excess of $2k while every S7 was under ($1.8k I think) leads me to think that we're in that gray area that Phil indicated where anything north of $2k might be interpreted as commercial and hence subject to duty.
I'm going to take this up with UPS, but I doubt it will change anything.
Bitmain needs to understand that the $2k threshold has an impact on the US market. They should return to pricing that's more sane.
They've been especially greedy this time. They probably would have made much more money if they had priced the S9 lower, assuming that they could fill the unit demand.
Has anyone tried DHL? I know UPS and FedEX are charging.