The Cost of Ownership

[Dan Moffet]

I bought a used mic pre-amp on Ebay from a guy in Connecticut. Following the shipping, it headed south then west, arriving according to the tracker at a strip mall postal outlet outside of Chicago. From there it apparently went to a nearby sorting facility before eventually went through another one outside of Toronto. It did finally come to Ottawa.

The ghost of Wrong Way Corrigan? (flying reference for Dan)

[Willie_B]

In the last several weeks I have had 2 orders from MiniSpares that shipped boxed via DHL. Got hit extra charges of a little over $30 on each. I have had orders from 2 other places that put my items went in a padded envelope that went UK post. No extra fees on either one of those. I have one more order that will probably be sent UK post, will see what happens with that one.

[Scargo]

Typically, my go-to supplier has been Mini Spares but recently they didn't have everything I needed in stock so I ordered six different items from Mini Sport UK. Everything was in stock.

I placed my order on May 15 and received it today, some 19 days later. That's not nearly as quick as I usually get on orders from Mini Spares.

They shipped everything via FedEx and the only snag was that I received an email and a phone call from FedEx, wanting me to contact them either in written form or by phone. They wanted to know what was included in the box, what materials the items were made of and what the countries of origin were. They were going to hold my order until those questions were answered. I gave them all my answers immediately and told them that I was guessing at the countries of origin.

The curious thing is that I do not see any shipping charges on the invoice from Mini Sport. The prices on every item on the invoice are exactly the way it showed in their online catalog. There were also no shipping charges, and no import duty fees or tariffs identified.

I guess I'll sit and wait to see what FedEx decides to do and if they're going bill me or not.

[94touring]

Fedex billed me about 6 months after an order from the UK not too long ago. Minisport has been pretty so so with shipping for a long time. I try to avoid them if I can due to that and UPS fiascos betwixt sport, ups, and myself.