This one kind of goes to that. But still need to do a deeper search. A bit harder as a few pimax accounts were scrubbed/anonymized. And of course some posts were later edited affecting search ability.
Formerly Dallas.
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There is a post where he mentioned pimax paid early VAT.
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I got the invoice from Fedex. As I said I first investigated as for me it sounded too high.
FedEx in Greece rents storage space and they charge for issuing the papers extra.
It’s a FedEx thing.
However, that’s the final charge.
That’s why I said that if Pimax used their international locations for shipping they would undoubtedly have more consistent and lower costs. I could settle for an extra cost of 40-50$ if they tried that route. I would still say it’s not the best solution, or even the fairest … but I even suggested that in a ticket and I was immediately dismissed.
THEY JUST DONT CARE!!!
Also, I was asking to get the comfort kit as well as the hand tracking IN THE SAME BOX weeks before they shipped. But they never even tried to make it work. They shipped the comfort kit and hand tracking separately a couple of days AFTER shipping the backer rewards.
To me… they just don’t care. Since I’m paying for customs, they could ship each little accessory separately for all they care… Whichever is easier for the employee. Doesn’t matter if I have like 10 emails asking them to make ONE LARGE SHIPMENT.
Bottom line… a company who doesn’t care for their international buyers should not have international buyers. They should not sell worldwide. They should only sell in China. And we should know about these things beforehand.
They indeed should have shipped in 1 package as they had for others. In theory I would be due at least a $10 
coupon that I paid to have HT shipped during KS(though in this case not concerned; however is principle).
There logistics process is a mess as @Ludiks paid express shipping(only clickable option) for 1 of 2 items. The other item was regular post. Of course took a long time to ship and was not express. The EU store is not even EU compliant as it seems still coming maybe from china as no VAT is charged. 
You seem to be missing the point here.
It’s not about trying to cheat anybody.
I was forced to pay the same amount + taxes and duty for an item that is availavble in Europe for the same price INCLUDING taxes and duty. That item is the Index base stations and controllers! They money I paid for it if you count the upgrade are about the same as it costs to get it from valve. Only if I got it from valve I wouldn;'t have to pay shiping, the VAT would be included and also the Customs.
When I asked Pimax to refund the 160$ from my original pledge to go and buy the index controllers from within the EU they refused. When they asked for 40$ to send the item within the EU I paid for it and then… they shipped it from shangai and that generated customs!
Talk about a screw over!!!
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Sweviver said pimax paid the vat originally but it was not a way to keep a sustainable business ie… they stopped paying vat
Continuing the discussion from What's the deal with taxes?:
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Yep that’s the post. Pimax should have followed what they had said in the KS faq about trying. Imho the folks whom had real reason to be upset were the Korean Backers whom due to pimax not fulfilling Backers first caused them to have there Import duties calculated at retail price vs KS backed amount.
Don’t twist my words, I have never said anywhere customs should collect 0€.
I’m saying Pimax importing to their EU warehouse(s) before shipping to individual backers means Pimax pays the customs fees (all at once, or at least for each individual imported batch) for importing the KS rewards to the EU.
Everybody living within EU knows he will not have to pay any customs when he buys something from (or just receive goods from) another country within the EU. For exemple in the EU we have Amazon France, Amazon Germany, Amazon Italy etc. and we can buy from any of those (who have different prices for the same item) without having to pay any customs fee because EU is a single market.
So when Pimax writes in the KS description Pimax will import large batches to the EU and only then ship to the backers from there, every backer living there understands he will not have to pay any customs fee.
This is the deal hundreds (maybe thousands) of backers living in the EU have signed for when they have decided to fund this project.
Shipping the rewards from within the EU was part of the deal, and it doesn’t requires high school studies to understand how this argument can have weighted in everyone’s decision to give their money to fund this Pimax KS versus a project where Pimax would have written the backers were responsible for paying customs fees.
The latter is even a case for which Kickstarter asks the project creators to make this clear in the description (= make clear backers will be responsible for paying customs fees), and as said just above it is easy to understand why Kickstarter makes this mandatory: because they want the backers to be aware of all the possible costs BEFORE taking their decision to fund a project.
Where is it written in the Pimax 8K KS description that the backers will have to pay customs fees ?
If it had been the case I wouldn’t have backed (as many other backers, most certainly). Because I would have then wondered if Pimax will be able to ship all those promised rewards at once (which was far from certain…), and then understood I could have to pay for customs fees several times, so the pledge price could be far from the final price and it could be significantly more expensive in the end after adding all the (unknown) fees.
That would have made the deal much less appealing (given the already existing risk of a pure failure) and then I would have just waited to see if I can buy this from amazon (or any other dealer within EU) once Pimax has shown they can make it real.
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Post# 82. However you also said you understand paying VAT so guessing somewhat separate from import fees. Pic with link to discussion on reducing custom/import fees legally.
Though it would be good if they shipped in 1 package vs many. Especially for those whom requested to wait fir complete package as they had foresight into per package extra fees and wanted the complete experience delivered vs pieces. Unfortunately pimax didn’t seem to remember to wait before shipping headsets out.
Many with KatVR Walk mini? Didn’t realize shipping and import was not included.
Well, actually they finally did both be express.
But I received them 3 weeks after my order.
And it was at least 10 days to be shipped.
So only had express the name.
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Sorry but you are minimize things. What you wrote doesn’t reflect was is written black on white on your screenshot. For the EU the “no fee in first batch” was not due to a different shipping method, it was because Pimax had imported the HMDs to their EU warehouse (paying the customs for that) and then shipped to the backers from there. That’s exactly what your screenshot say they were promising to do at the time to ask our money to help funding their KS project.
I think you are mixing things up between what seems to have been done for Canada and what was done for EU. I don’t know how customs work between USA and Canada but I know how it works here in the EU: customs are paid when the goods are imported to the EU and then those goods can be shipped anywhere within the EU and there will be no customs at all for the final recipient.
So when a project creator writes in his KS he will import large quantities to his (existing!) EU warehouse and ship to the backers from there, everyone understands he (the backer) will not have to pay any customs fee for receiving that shipment. Plain simple.
If find ironic you (not targetting you or anyone else specifically) are trying to find that post from Sweviver where he told Pimax has paid the VAT when importing the HMDs as I am the one who digged that first a few weeks ago to argue Pimax was fully aware the EU warehouse mention in their KS FAQ was implying they (Pimax) were responsible for paying the customs.
I have shown that post several times already, publicly and in private messages to Pimax staff, for arguing with them I should not pay any of those fees as it was a Pimax charge given the KS terms. No one from Pimax staff ever gave me an explanation why Pimax had paid the customs at this time (including VAT from what sweviver said), never asking the backers to pay this back to Pimax, and why Pimax now claims those customs fees would be the responsability of the backers…
I have even already posted here a discussion with Pimax staff from earlier this year where I was explained (by staff) Pimax was about to transfer the remaining KS rewards to their EU warehouses (I know they have/had one in Marseille and another one in Poland IIRC). Again, that was just simply following the initial plan from the KS regarding shipping the rewards to the EU backers from an EU warehouse, and certainly not directly from China with customs to be paid by the backers…
So don’t tell me the KS FAQ is just saying Pimax only promised they “would try to”. Not only they said it was the “plan” but they have reinforced the certainty of this plan (in future backers’ minds) by affirming Pimax was already owning warehouses to make that plan happen for (at least) the USA and the EU.
This information about the shipments was without a doubt one of the Pimax (strong) arguments to make people want to fund the project. I find it was even reinforced more by claiming they were not new in the business, that Pimax was “dreamed up in the Silicon Valley”, with the developper team having “decades of experience in smart devices, including many years experience in VR headset R&D and manufacturing”.
DECADES OF EXPERIENCE IN SMART DEVICES !!!
Who could then doubt a team like this could promise your rewards will be imported by them to their existing EU warehouse before shipping to you, but in fact this is just “a vague plan they hope they can do”. Let be serious one minute, we are talking about a KS description that has generated several millions USD in funds…
Am I possibly. However in Canada it was not due to shipping to a warehouse. It was directly due to shipping method China Post to Canada Post. First Batch shipped from China as I was in the first batch and didn’t ship to the warehouse(would still get an import fee if shipped from to 
).
A few companies ship via a similar method pimax used in first Batch. One online retailer I have never received customs fees. However have been told by others they use a grey area to do this. Where as say Gearbest uses DHL and DHL always carries extra shipping fees on top of what is paid.
Thread from 2017 with VAT concerns.
https://community.openmr.ai/t/courier-vat-handling-charges-on-delivery-eu/4287?u=heliosurge
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I trust you on this 100%.
EU is just a different story and this is where I live.
Well found the official post
Since that post the logistics partner changed several times. However it does say some will have import fees.
Also Changes from shipping to 
warehouse due to brexit and other things along the way. Dallas’ post I quoted above also mentions Vat fees.
Thanks for finding this, it shows what I have been saying since the beginning:
for the EU the shipments were not direct from China but first imported in a Pimax EU warehouse in large quantities and then shipped to EU backers from there.
Exactly as written in the KS FAQ.
Also the mention about “possible import fees depending on the logistics partner” does not concern the EU at all (for those goods first imported in the UK). As long as the packages were going from the UK to any other EU country there were no customs regardless the company handling the shipment.
The customs fees happened when the goods have entered in the UK (= in the EU) coming from China, and Pimax has paid them.
Important to note this doesn’t mean EU backers have not paid any VAT for those HMDs. This means the VAT was included in the pledge price. So when Pimax pays the VAT for importing the HMDs into the UK (= into the EU) Pimax just gives back the VAT part of the pledge amount that the EU backers had initially paid to Pimax (through Kickstarter).
In other words, when Pimax has made the promise to ship the rewards from an EU warehouse, they have implicitely acknowledged their responsability to include this in their calculations of the pledges prices.
Has Pimax done it correctly ? Has Pimax also foreseen they could have to make several shipments to ship all the rewards ? Have they foreseen all the delays, the multiple RMAs, the price to source the LHv2, etc ? In the end the backers don’t have to wonder about all this, they just have to know they have funded a project based on terms they are legitimate to expect respected/honored by Pimax.
Not true as one backer was requesting Austria vs Uk. And it does say that you may experience import fees; nowhere does it specify EU was exempt.
Reminds me of when I bought a Svga cable to RGB only to discover it does not work depending on monitor and device. Nowhere did it say it would not work. One could argue the cable manufacturers should specify that specific detail.
It says: (hence why the detail was not attached directly to no. 2)
May is a powerful word meaning in this case shouldn’t but could. They are not using that Logistic partner as people requested a different one due to reviews/experiences with that one. If you recall pimax tried quite a few logistic services and even had to ask backers to let them know if it arrived due to not being able to track packages. As one or more seemed to use padded track package updates that was not accurate.
Don’t draw false conclusions from a single post where that person doesn’t even mention he would have had to pay any customs fee.
The EU follows a policy called “Free movement of goods”.
It means not only customs duties have been purely abolished within EU, but even charges having an effect equivalent to that of customs duties are prohibited.
Man, this is just the root of the EU single market… It has a legal basis from the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU).
You can read about it on this page of the European Parliament website:
Yes you shouldn’t. Your presuming that
This only applies to No. 2. If it applied to only No. 2 it would be directly attached to that number. Not posted separately to the 2 listed items.
No different than when I presumed that a vga to rgb cable would work.
Your choosing which listed item that last statement pertains to. There is no direct statement that says it only pertains to non EU deliveries.
Simple truth either assumption could be true as it is not perfectly clear.
As I mentioned those backers whom opted to wait for everything to be ready & shipped in 1 box are ones that honestly have a real complaint as that requested that option. That was not honored do have real cause to be aggravated. The same is true with the op whom requested extra items to be packaged in his backer box to avoid per package processing fees.
Pimax has made numerous mistakes. However some we have to own by our comprehension being flawed.
Reminds me of the fellow after almost a year+ receiving his 8k said “I have received my headset. But there is a problem, it’s not 8k” Hard to believe after all the media coverage during and after the KS we had one or possibly more that somehow missed that spotlight.
I don’t understand a single word about what you’re trying to argue.
I have given you the link proving my statement is correct.
2018 shipment UK -> any EU country = no customs. Period.
Simply the point regarding VAT is clear it applies to points 1 & 2. If you like can provide link to EU backer whom said it was costly to receive stuff pre brexit I think it was to Switzerland?
Same can be said there are other EU backers whom were concerned about VAT costs so they obviously were not under the presumption they wouldn’t pay any VAT.
You can’t make presumptions of what is not said.