Import Duty

Copy of FedEx invoice attached. I can't work out how they got to that amount of VAT.

Having to pay a huge amount for shipping, then also pay the shipper for their admin of the shipping, is very disappointing.

I can see that some international orders for the AudioMoth case have had unusually high import duties. Generally these should be 20% of the subtotal for Europe (other countries may vary).

If you have paid more than 20% import duties please email me at matt@groupgets.com with your order number and receipt with the tax you paid (from FedEx, DHL, or customs). Also if anyone has received any tax invoice/document/anything with a breakdown of the tax cost I would like to see this, I am working to fix any problems for future rounds of AudioMoth or cases, and it would be helpful to see why some of the import duties were so much higher than they should have been. Any orders from Round 10 of AudioMoth that are in Europe will not have to pay import duties, we charged 20% to Europe customers during checkout and used a shipment forwarder in Europe (so we pay the duties up front in one bulk shipment). Order placed outside of Europe may have to pay import duties.

For round 11 we are doing all shipping from the US and are not charging the import duties up front. Any international orders will have to pay import duties when the shipment reaches your countries customs. Usually you would receive a notice from the shipping company (FedEx or DHL) or your countries customs office. We have decided to ship all orders ourselves since our forwarder was not packaging the products very well (like what andya experienced), using them was adding 1-3 weeks delay, the tracking for the service they use is not great, and we were able to lower our shipping rates from the carriers we use worldwide to more reasonable prices.

We are also adding multiple notices to our website during the checkout process to hopefully make it more clear that import duties are not included in the shipping costs, these should be up in a day.

Reply from GroupGets support ... no offer to pay the VAT :-( As a not for profit community conservation group we can't afford this. "Sorry for the unexpected costs. The VAT for the cases was not included at checkout and is unusually high. We are aware of the issue and looking into why the VAT is so high for the cases. We will update you with more information as soon as it becomes available to us.

Best regards, Griffin"

I also asked about VAT on AM round 10 which arrived yesterday (poorly packed with 10 AM rattling about in a empty box with 6 popped air bags)

"The good news is that you will not have to pay a VAT on the Audiomoths on delivery. It was included at checkout."

No reply from groupgets on the discussion, hence I've raised a ticket with them: https://groupgets.freshdesk.com/support/tickets/new Suggest others do the same. :-(

Hello all. I was part of AM Round 9. The devices were delivered by FedEx and I did have to pay the import tax, but apparently this arrangement was made to work around the delays to shipping caused by covid. However, GroupGets had already refunded the equivalent cost of the tax back to my university's accounts dept. so in the end everything worked out the sam price. I agree this breakdown could be made clearer because I too would not have had the budget to cover tax had I not been refunded.

Same for me here in France, 29,50 €. That is ridiculous. This should be said/calculated when buying.

Agreed Lyndon, I also am unlikely to order more AMs if there is a risk of this happening again. In fact I'm VERY concerned about the batch of AM's I have coming in round 10, as there is no extra funding in this project to pay any additional fees.

I have now had an invoice from Fed Ex 😣 The tax almost exceeds the cost of the enclosures. Had I known this was going to happen, I wouldn't have ordered them. I'm also unlikely to order more AMs if there is a risk of this happening again. Shame.

+1 I also got a FedEx Invoice in the post a few days after my AM case. £21.38 for "original VAT" on one case. Bringing the total cost for one case to over £69! Ridiculous!! I've queried with GroupGets, as I suspect they made some error with the paperwork their side.

As an aside why they send "international priority" at such high cost defeats me. We've usually waited months for stuff from GroupGets, so a few days (or weeks) extra on a cheap slow boat would not matter at all.

I didn't have to pay duty on the AM units (3 rounds).

However, FedEx delivered the enclosures today and didn't ask for any money! Maybe they will send me an invoice.

I have the same problem, import charges of €44 as the enclosures "are from outside EU" (Fedex). I'd never experienced this before.