urbanmoto said:
ryan1685 said:
Offroader said:
I know someone who is in contact with an agent who said they would ship it. But based on what you are saying, I want to double check that there won't be any issues and if the agent is aware of shipping something with a battery.
I assume you are contacting agents to ship the Sur-Ron by sea freight and not air? If they are trying to ship it air then yes you will have issues with the batteries.
Ryan, do you speak Chinese? Or are you contacting them all in English?
My friends wife lives in China and it is her first language, she got the same response from the people at Tao Bao as I did. She was told that it would be very difficult for her to get the bike out of China once it was shipped to her house. I Don't know what I am doing wrong and she is a very astute business women worth millions of dollars. Put it this way, when my friend comes home to Canada for a few months, she has sent him multiple $5000 bills Canadian to live, so she isn't a dumb person by any means, lol not that money is the only benchmark for intelligence.
To load via sea or airfrieght you have to be able to show the factory certified safety certificates for the appropriate transportation, of course the factory would only give these documents to official distributors. Yes the China domestic price is lower than the base price around the world, but when you add in frieght, insurance, import duties, customs clearance and cash flow needed to buy a minimum of 60 units (thats only a 20ft container) then I dont think prices around the globe are that far out, A japanese built motorcycle is of course cheaper in the Japanese domestic market than the US or UK, but we dont all want to import a single bike from Japan just to save £500, official distributors dont forget also have to cover liability insurance, handle recalls and whole host of other regulations (eg in EEC EMC testing, CE approval and secure registration schemes) and also EEC legislation means a proper warranty, plus full spare parts support must be provided.
Valid points urbanmoto. There is a reason we got importers, they are the midle man when things go south. And they are the ones we go to when trouble arise, and they will need to sort their customers out. With parallell import/gray import the end customer got all the risk, and if something goes wrong and they are even able to get the manufacturer to admit and take responsible (not a given outcome) they will at the very least need to cover shipping of old parts and return shipping for the new. And there is a new risk, even if the factory say they will submit to your claim, when the faulty part is returned their inspection can result in what they call a "false claim", user error or miss usage and you end up with a two shipping fee, lots of stress and you get your broken parts back months later.
Looking at the big picture I would say importing on your own is stress, hard work and you need to be sure there is a dividend at the end. For 500 I would not consider it worth while, for 1000 still to much pita, around 1500 it might start to make sense. But if no shipping agents are up for the task it is a moot point and not a feasible option anyway. Put in extra hours at work or drop some luxury items in your every day life a month or two or whatever time is needed to get the bike via proper channels.
As for shipping rules and regulations I don't think it is entirely correct that you need papers from manufacturer. I know of a guy that the winter before las did a large purchase from China of electric robotic lawn movers. A container full. He shopped around for the lowest prices from several vendors and had a Chinese delivery address for collecting the items and re package into a container, and shipped it to EU. When I talked to him he too had trouble finding shipping for the lot, but as the goods was already bought and paid for giving up was not an option and he got it all sorted via emails, phones calls and didn't need to make a trip to China to solve this himself. Unless there are newer regulations since he did his shopping a year and a half back, there is a clausal where you can declare the goods yourself and that will be ok and legal. I don't know more of the details but for him it got all sorted and he sold out the lot when the container arrived, I think he kept like 10% of them for warranty claims, parts and replacement.
That said, I think we really need a new take on the whole Li-ion hazard shipping thing.
@Berd I don't disagree with what you are saying. But I don't think you got the idea of the group buy. The group buy was not a "make money quick idea". It overall goal was not to make money. It was for buyers to get together on a joint purchase to take advantage of the price difference in Chinese domestic market and the international market. No long term relationship needed. And no trip around the world required to close the deal. So most of your listed arguments don't apply for a group buy. As it is not that kind of purchase and sale process you had in mind when you wrote that. The group buy will not try to win a battle with Luna or any other official Sur Ron outlets. They group buy will not give any added value to the end buyer, nor will any problems that might arrive be handed over to the one that organized the group buy. Each individual party joining such a a purchase is left with all the savings and all the risk.
Regarding shipping rules and regulations I agree, if someone will push on with a group buy they will surely need to read up and get a full in depth understanding of the shipping rules and regulations for shipping li-ion.
