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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!

  • Thank you for this explanation. 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? 

    I personally had very good experience with the service of UPS. In fact, I told other people out of community to use UPS instead of using any other global curriers such as DHL etc. Cause the service was really fantastic. 

    I also want to share a story where I was asked to pay bribery, but I clearly refused.

    Once Nordic semi. sent me some kit and they were held by customs at Mumbai stating there is a SIM card and you have to visit Mumbai and give clarification for the kits. I clearly refused to travel some 900 kms on my own expense just for releasing two dev. kits. The the DHL agent asked me to send someone. I sent one of my friend twice and he met with the officers and submitted some documents. After two meeting the officer said he won't be able to release the kit as there is SIM card even though I said you can dispose the SIM and send me rest of the kit. I assumed at this point he thought that he would get some bribery offer which we did not.!!

    Then after a month or so I got email that your package will be disposed off on someday mentioned in the email. I decided to file a complaint about this, and I did that with anti-corruption related matters online. I said it cannot be held because this kit has nothing that is not available to purchase online. Soon after two days I got a call from same DHL agent that your parcel is released.!!

    I asked him ""why? what happened?"" "now you are releasing the kits"". He said yes! actually, they have too. 

    Even after that when I got a parcel there was a bill with duty not paid.? I said it is paid already and I had the bill for that. Again, I had to file complain and wait some more days. Finally, I received the kits.

    Meaning these people are quite corrupt. Sometimes it takes a lot to deal with them. 

    Imagine that they can also create wrong bills, detain your devices etc just to get money. Sometimes these parcel agents are also involved with them in corruption. With UPS there was no such thing.

    Thanks to element 14 for their trust and sending me some really cool devices over the past years. 

    Also, I would like to state that when you pay for duty that is approx. 33% there should be some return from the local government in terms of development, transparent and corruption free system, etc. Which is not there unfortunately here.

  • in reply to michaelkellett
    michaelkellett said:
    closely followed by Evri

    Evri? The company that had to change its name because hermes was considered so awful they ran away from it?

  • 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.