'good' China electronics seller?

Cornucopia

There is no limit to multiple £15 shipments.

It therefore depends on what you are importing as to whether it is practical to ship many small packages or one large one. Most sellers on aliexpress seem to offer a variety of shipment sizes of smaller, cheaper products.

The rules changed some while ago - the limit used to be £18, but applied to "gifts" and there was the danger of HMRC intervening if a pattern emerged suggesting commercial importing. The new £15 limit applies to any shipment.

50Twuncle

About 13 years ago - I imported a pair of batteries for a video camera. from Malaysia, which cost £70 - I, somehow avoided any charges at all on these !!
Are postmen supposed to collect the charges nowadays or do you get notified of any packages and collect them from a central office ?

Cornucopia

The system isn't 100% perfect - there is so much stuff being imported and exported, it can't be.

What is supposed to happen is that the seller completes the customs sticker accurately, and the importing courier company then assesses and collects the taxes on behalf of HMRC before releasing the package.

esuhl

I've had no major problems with dealextreme.com (aka dx.com)... The torches, bike lights, batteries & chargers have all been great (and cheap!).

Although I do seem to get spam emails from China addressing me by name now... :-/

Norman_Castle

spam.....................................................................................................^

sillygoose

esuhl wrote: »

I've had no major problems with dealextreme.com (aka dx.com)... The torches, bike lights, batteries & chargers have all been great (and cheap!).

Although I do seem to get spam emails from China addressing me by name now... :-/

As this thread seems to have surfaced again I thought I would add a follow up.

Bought a tablet from Dealextreme, took a few days to ship then it went from Shenzhen to Coventry in 2 days (I used reasonably priced express option).

Then it took UK customs OVER A WEEK just to shove it down the conveyor belt, even though it was custom labelled to be of no interest to them.

Then it took Parcel Force a few more days to deliver and leave dumped on my doorstep whilst I was out, without a signature.

The Chinese end went smoothly, the UK end of it was rubbish!

Anyway the tablet, a Chuwi V88S is very good, fast 1.6ghz quad core - benchmarks same as a Nexus 7, 8" 4:3 ratio IPS screen which is sharp and bright, looks better than its 1024x768 should! 5000mah battery seems to last well and yet the device is on 7.5mm thick. Has a near clean install of Android 4.2.2 and I have already rooted and modded it. Also has Bluetooth, HDMI and SD slot. Wifi range fine. Pretty much all I need.

jaydeeuk1

With DX don't expect any kind of customer service if anything goes wrong. I certainly wouldn't buy anything worth more than £20 from there.

I was amongst a group of people last year who bought one of their £17 tablets, showing in stock for a good week after ordering. 20 days passed with no dispatch email, so I asked their CS who confirmed everything is ok and my ordering is being processed.

Another 10 days still nothing so I emailed again, and they're out of stock now awaiting resupply, would I like a refund? No thank you I'll wait.

10 days later I enquired and they said yes they have stock and my order is now 'high priority'. Another week and still nothing, but I noticed that the exact same tablet but with a different SKU for £60 appeared, so again I contacted them and they said 'your order is still being processed as its out of stock'. No it isn't, it is just stocked under a different SKU, can you send me that one please? 'No, can't do that, would you like to wait until it comes back in stock?' Instead I sent their CS FAO managers a very polite email explaining the situation, and if they could instead send the tablet as a gesture of goodwill, (even though I had bought the f*cking thing anyway). No reply, was just sent a refund.

Useless tw@ts.

k2150

Both SPEmall and Geekbuying will ship your order as gift with a value below $20 US irrespective of what you order or how much you have paid for that order. They do this automatically. If you want fast delivery add DHL delivery to your order, this can cost anything from free to around $15 it all depends on what your ordering on any given day, my advice is always use DHL. I've ordered from both companies, DHL deliveries take around 10 -15 days to Heathrow and then around 1-2 days to clear uk customs, so far I've been lucky, never had a package held by uk customs for import duty. Your experiences may differ. Do your research first, use web sites like Gizchina.com, and be aware that almost every China online seller will tell you yes they do have stock when in fact they don't, also that a China warranty isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Having said that there are some amazing smartphones coming out of China in 2014, go for reputable brand names like UMi, Zopo, Meizu, JiaYu, Xiaomi, iOcean, etc, these are the brands that sell big in China
.

50Twuncle

k2150 wrote: »

Both SPEmall and Geekbuying will ship your order as gift with a value below $20 US irrespective of what you order or how much you have paid for that order. They do this automatically. If you want fast delivery add DHL delivery to your order, this can cost anything from free to around $15 it all depends on what your ordering on any given day, my advice is always use DHL. I've ordered from both companies, DHL deliveries take around 10 -15 days to Heathrow and then around 1-2 days to clear uk customs, so far I've been lucky, never had a package held by uk customs for import duty. Your experiences may differ. Do your research first, use web sites like Gizchina.com, and be aware that almost every China online seller will tell you yes they do have stock when in fact they don't, also that a China warranty isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Having said that there are some amazing smartphones coming out of China in 2014, go for reputable brand names like UMi, Zopo, Meizu, JiaYu, Xiaomi, iOcean, etc, these are the brands that sell big in China
.

What are $'s ?

esuhl

50Twuncle wrote: »

What are $'s ?

The dollar ($) is a currency unit, just like the pound sterling (£).

Ask your teachers to explain how money of different currencies is used in different parts of the world.