Hey everyone!
Whether it is a quiz competition, design challenge, project14 or roadtest (or maybe if you're a top member), the element14 Community team does our very best to make the competition prizes, parts and Community swag available to everyone no matter where you are in the world.
We have dealt with customs invoices, attempted back handers to pass parcels along and sometimes bribery.
Over the past year we have changed our courier, previously we have had to order parts from our own stores, or from external stores (like say, amazon) and we have them delivered to the american office in Chicago. With changes that have happened, that is no longer an option to send them out via UPS, and so we now ship out the majority of items either direct from the warehouse (in the appropriate country) or we order them into our England office in Leeds.
This means, that we have had to switch courier to TNT.
TNT, is also slowly (like glacial slowly, but not global warming glacial melting slowly) merging with FedEx.
This has introduced problems, sometimes when receiving an item, you may have been asked to pay customs taxes or import duty. We send every item "delivery duty paid" and we put on the delivery notes the appropriate codes to make sure that you, as a recipient, should not be charged.
No member should pay any item for receiving a parcel.
If you are attempted to be charged, get in touch with us and we will resolve this for you.
Further, a change of courier and a change of country, has meant that there are some regions and areas that we literally can no longer deliver to, if we do not have a warehouse in that location or if we need to send the item out from the England office. So far this has unfortunately, been areas in India. Despite having previously been able to send to them before (UPS had coverage apparently, but TNT does not).
We have limited options to circumvent this or find alternatives, we as a Community team follow what the rest of the company uses as a courier and we work closely with our freight and shipping teams to be able to provide items to you, our members.
Please be patient and understanding with us as we navigate this as it comes, and we are attempting to make sure that we catch this before getting to the point where we have to let you, as our members, down with disappointment.
We are also investigating options for prizes beyond physical items, we have had no small amount of people signing up for competitions, and then saying "actually... can I just have a voucher?" and while part of me thinks "well, why are you entering a competition if you don't want the prize?" having options that are not simply an Apple Mac or something else technological or fun (that isn't simply from our warehouse) is something that we are also exploring. We feel the option to have something that is of value to you as a prize is important and we as a team want to support that.
Thanks for being a part of the community!
