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Shipping of prizes and parts to Community members and the trials and tribulations of the team

cstanton

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!

  • in reply to embeddedguy
    embeddedguy said:
    I read somewhere there is India and as I am located there, is it that you won't be able to ship kits, prices, etc to India at the moment? OR only some of them? 

    There are locations in India that the courier we use to send parcels from the UK office will not deliver to.

    cstanton said:
    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 can only assess this on a case by case basis and it depends where the item's being sent to.

  • in reply to cstanton

    Ok. I wanted to apply for the design challenge In reach by TDK sensors. So I am thinking. Anyways I will apply..!

  • in reply to embeddedguy

    I checked the address on your profile, you're fine.

  • Thanks for the update and for all the effort you all put into making things work for all of us!

  • Appreciate the time and effort taken to organize the quizzes, roadtests, and design challenges. I truly believe that element14 community and its amazing members help keep the spirit of engineering alive — encouraging innovation, learning, and collaboration. Thank you for the opportunities and generous prizes!"

  • Thanks for the efforts put into it.

    Recently, I was selected to participate in a road test program. Unfortunately, there was an issue with my mobile number, which was incorrectly entered despite being correct in my profile. As a result, the product was held at customs for clearance for an entire week until I finally received notification through a letter from FedEx.The situation was further complicated because FedEx did not have my email address. After receiving the FedEx letter through the post, I promptly completed the KYC process.

    Following the KYC completion, I contacted TnT to correct my contact number for delivery by requesting they add a note to my shipment. Despite their verbal agreement during our phone conversation, they failed to implement this change as the shipment was already out for delivery. They neither contacted me nor made any attempt to reach out before marking the delivery as closed for that day.

    The next day, TNT inexplicably updated the status to "Payment not ready on delivery," which is invalid for DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) shipments. This status update is particularly confusing given that the package was already out for delivery the previous day — how could it suddenly have payment issues?

    To this date, I have still not received my shipment. My experience with customer service has been extremely disappointing, with representatives providing inconsistent and incoherent responses that have failed to resolve the situation.

  • in reply to venkat01

    similar experience here - it seems that they don't propagate DDP status to the delivery: customs team acknowledges that fees are to be paid by the sender, then delivery sends SMS that payment is required (they have even sent me invoices to be paid one time - then corrected some of them to zero. I only hope rest of them they also zeroed)... Strange that it happens in different countries - looks like systemic problem...

  • in reply to JWx

    I recently followed up on a customs invoice payment issue for one of our deliveries to Canada.

    I will say, that I am somewhat tenacious when presented with half-hearted words of "we're looking into it" and purposefully ask "ok, when will I hear back?" and "how do I follow up on this?" and then a week later, I call them up again.

    Turns out TNT/FedEx Canada fail to look at DDP (delivery duty paid) being acknowledged on their deliveries, there's a lack of communication between England and Canada in this regard and the England offices "can't see" the Canadian invoices. If the recipient doesn't have a FedEx/TNT account they create a temporary one, and that's how they then go forward to "effectively charge" for it.

     , we have a limited amount of time to follow up on deliveries. No more than 30 days. If the delivery you were meant to receive is within the past 30 days of this post, do let me know. Otherwise, that's pretty frustrating for everyone involved.

    Any issues should be posted to Feedback and Support , while members of the team are approachable, sometimes that means the problems cannot be looked into if that person is out of office.

  • in reply to dougw

    I am glad to know that you received the prize for Start a Movement design challenge. You are lucky that you received an e-bike but I was informed that it it not possible to send me the mentioned e-bike, rather they suggested me to choose a e-bike from a local supplier but unfortunately I didn’t find any appropriate e-bike in my country. Finally I have chosen a waveform generator and a benchtop multimeter as an alternative option and waiting for the prize.