Shipping parts to China dilemma

[exxos]

So I was about to ship the parts for the Falcon RTC modules viewtopic.php?p=104969#p104969 when it seems the goalposts have changed yet again in shipping parts.

Mostly this boils down to import and export charges. Of course they was always there, but they seem to have really tightened up on things now making it basically (at least in this case) impossible to ship parts.

Basically they want total proof of the purchase price of parts so they can add VAT. Again this is nothing new. Aside from creating more paperwork, a lot of parts were purchased along with other items making the invoicing even more complicated and time consuming.

Also because they want full information, the purchase price I made on parts was before 2020 and parts prices were incredibly lower. The price of the RTC chip is now 3x what it was. So if China Customs are really being such dicks now, and and actually check my order codes versus current prices and find a discrepancy they will seize the parcel!! I really don't want to take this risk with losing my parts.

The PCB company want to purchase the parts themselves to avoid it, which is of course logical, only same problem again, that it will considerably increase the price of getting the project done.

Also apparently if the country of origin is deemed to be USA, you can get hit with a additional 25% import tax. I guess this came about because if I remember rightly, Trump was trying to avoid companies using China and caused friction there which is obviously re-bounded with the China tax office

Overall it is expensive enough getting hit with import taxes as it is. I'm basically paying taxes on exporting and importing exactly the same goods. And going down the road of trying to explain this all is temporary import exports would turn into a nightmare as it normally does with such things. It is just not worth the hassle.

I purchased a lot of parts in 2020 because I feared of parts shortages. I did not really anticipate the prices going up at the time like they have done. Though getting projects finished off by shipping ports to China obviously is not viable any more

Then it goes back to the same old story of, "if you want something doing, do it yourself" which would be fine if I actually had the time and the health to assemble quantities of things now.

My only current thought is to simply try and find a UK company to assemble things. The cost will of course be higher, but if I'm having to pay extra anyway... I might as well just cut out the risk and the paperwork. Though I have got projects assembled before in the UK as prototypes, I cannot remember the costs involved. It is likely my only option in this case.

The whole thing really does get you down and get very tiresome having to deal with impossible situations every single time I want something to be done

[HigashiJun]

Welcome to the new world.

[mrbombermillzy]

I know you try your best to cater for all situations, but perhaps its time to draw the line here with shipping to China.

By all means put an apology up on the store, blaming this (politically driven, no doubt) stupid convoluted, expensive and close to impossible to use system.

Sooner or later, a solution will prevail.

Who knows? Maybe companies will spring up that are located in other countries that border China and offer to ship/transport them to a waiting Chinese courier on the other side? Far whackier stuff has become reality.

In the meantime though... I would seriously consider the above option.

[exxos]

Maybe companies will spring up that are located in other countries that border China and offer to ship/transport them to a waiting Chinese courier on the other side?

I assume that would probably increase some costs again anyway, there would likely still need all the documentation as well . Plus I really need a solution right now not some years down the line.

The problem is I have already considered other companies previously. It is something I've just been doing continuously pretty much every year. While there are a lot of companies, there are not many "low cost" solutions. If I'm going to pay silly money I might as well get stuff made in the UK.

For an example, JLC are cheap, maybe £10 for a few small boards. As soon as you go somewhere else it generally goes up to £100-£200. Plus assembly... I wrote lots about this already. A simple project can end up costing several hundred to produce. I considered companies from USA, India.. It all becomes a ongoing nightmare. I really don't want to look for another PCB supply for the 50th time.

Basically I have been outsourcing because I simply don't have the time (or again health / motivation) for soldering endless thousands of parts each week. Even though it increase costs to get someone else to make them, it was the only solution. But that solution is no longer viable. I am back to building stuff myself again. I really wanted to do less work as time went on not increase my workload again

Sooner or later, a solution will prevail.

I wish that was the case but again it has been a ongoing nightmare since day one. I think it is just time to get off the merry-go-round.

[mrbombermillzy]

I dont know what else to say.

In the current climate, its as if the world governments are striving to kill off small businesses.

One can only presume that a way of achieving this is the above described problem, as only the big corporates can afford to swallow these losses.

Why else would they do it?

[rubber_jonnie]

Honestly, it seems financially impractical to be paying charges both ways, I'd vote for finding somewhere UK based that can build them, even if there is a slight cost increase, surely it can't be worse than the double trouble you get sening it to China and back?

[exxos]

In the current climate, its as if the world governments are striving to kill off small businesses.

Sure seems that way

I don't think the government really classes small companies as anything meaningful, unless we are late paying our tax that is!

One can only presume that a way of achieving this is the above described problem, as only the big corporates can afford to swallow these losses.
Why else would they do it?

The big corporations love regulation because the smaller companies struggle to keep up with everything. They can employ people to deal with every problem they come across. People like me can't. I sure don't get paid for dealing with all this all the time.

For me, pretty much every single time I want to get something done, I have to wade through chaos of finding another PCB company. I was using PCBWAY before. Already ranted about the a few months ago.

I mean look at all the rants I have had pretty much every year about one thing or another relating to all this. There just becomes a time of , "What is the point". It is just a never-ending uphill battle. Just simply too many fingers in too many pies all the time, mixed in with all the neverending paperwork.

[exxos]

Honestly, it seems financially impractical to be paying charges both ways, I'd vote for finding somewhere UK based that can build them, even if there is a slight cost increase, surely it can't be worse than the double trouble you get sending it to China and back?

The problem is it is not a slight cost increase getting stuff made in the UK Some places will easily charge £200+ for a small stencil and £200+ "tooling" costs etc. They don't really want to do low quantities stuff It probably would be cost-effective to use the UK if I was manufacturing tens of thousands of things . It probably would work out a lot better value per board. But the Atari market simply is not big enough for such volumes. I already contacted a lot of UK companies previously and even got one company to make some flashy clock boards. But I already had the stencil in that case which they did not really like using. Looks like assembly cost £360 for 5 boards.

I pretty much said the same thing for years, there is not really a low-cost manufacturing method in the UK. If I really had the time space & motivation, at least a few years back, I would have considered setting up a small volume run house, more base towards hobbyists and even buying all the equipment to do so. But I'm really just too tired and worn out these days to embark on such another epic amount of chaos.

There was a good company which I was using in the UK a few years back. But since we went into lockdown they did not really spin up again. They shifted into recycling parts because of the parts shortages. Plus last couple of years of me using them they really just treated me like a "rainy day" customer. I was literally waiting months to get stuff made. Their prices were really good though because they did hand assembly for the most part. @Icky even use them and I think it took him three years just to get his unassembled boards back from them.

There is the guy I used to work with who is still currently finishing off the assembly of my power supplies. I am seeing him tomorrow in fact because I need to drop off some more transforms for him. Though I don't really get the impression he wants to do stuff any more and seems be getting ever so slower in doing stuff. But I only make about £10 on the PSU's, and I am having to pay him £5 a pop to finish them off and test, but it's a half hour drive each way, so fuel costs and such involved etc. I think though because he smokes like a chimney, the smoke is reacting with the flux somehow because a lot of stuff is coming back with light black charcoal flux which I cannot remove. He would not be able to solder surface mount parts anyway.

I have the Voltera printer, so I can build them. But processing and handling so many boards is not really thing I want to do any more. Again it hurts my hands a lot. The problem is also, I was trying to do a better test setup for testing FPUs on the DFB1X, so that has gone out the window because I'm having to stop to deal with all this new chaos. It is pretty much how everything is all-time. I'm supposed to be trying to tidy up my workshop so I can actually find stuff. Been trying to do that for ages. It should have been a very quick thing to do in getting the boards made. Now its turning into neverending chaos again. I don't think I really would want to deal with another PCB company again. It seems to be a yearly thing which is just turning into a huge time sink

[rubber_jonnie]

@exxos Hmm, all seems a bit impractical, and I guess one of the issues with just selling kits is people not always having the skills to build them.

Do you think it might be feasible to something along the lines of TerribleFire and have some trusted builders to assemble them?

[exxos]

@exxos Hmm, all seems a bit impractical, and I guess one of the issues with just selling kits is people not always having the skills to build them.

That's the problem as you know already yourself, half the people have troubles even fitting the most basic stuff nevermind SMT soldering.

Look at the chaos with the solder-in STE booster. Pretty much everyone who tried to remove the CPU destroyed their motherboard. Some people are buying stuff assembled and some are not from my store. It's always a bit of a mixed bag. But a lot of stuff still requires some soldering to fit to their machines in one respect or another anyway.

Do you think it might be feasible to something along the lines of TerribleFire and have some trusted builders to assemble them?

I think people would have spoken out by now with the amount of years I've been asking for help with stuff. It's normally a case of people don't really have the time to invest in doing such work.

Though I think the main problem is there is hardly any profit in doing this stuff. I mean currently terriblefire stuff is open source people can gain all the profits themselves. Plus they are not exactly low-cost items. They could make £50+ easily on a TF board assembled. The buyers are there and willing to pay. I think realistically nobody is going to bother with the hassle of assembling and distributing low cost boards when they are going to make sub £5 profit on them. In terms of the RTC alone, they would need a Falcon in order to test them before dispatch.

If I was making huge profits and I would just pay the higher fabrication costs or employ someone to help. But I don't even get paid for any of this work. So nobody else is going to do the work for free. And having to buy stuff in bulk to try and get the prices down per board. It is a risk that stuff will not sell and indeed I have fallen into this trap many times. So I doubt anyone else would want to take the risk either. Even if they went for lower quantities the overall price would be higher and it could potentially price itself out of the market anyway.

It could potentially make it easier for people overseas to buy stuff, some items would not be shipped from the UK. But if they wanted to buy multiple items, they would end up paying shipping twice from two different supplies. There used to be people overseas which I think "drop shipped" items from my store but I don't think anyone does that any more.

So I think what TF does with his distributors works,and works very well. But they are selling 100's if not thousands of boards. If the Atari market was 1000x larger, it would make sense to have people around the world making the stuff. But for something which is only going to sell a handful a year.. Absolutely nobody is going to take on that work and risk. I have around 20 test machines for testing various kits before I sell them.