Test Report: Ordering a Lytro LightField camera from Europe
About a month ago i told you about 4 ways to order a Lytro camera from abroad.
I myself am based in Austria (Europe), and placed my Lytro order back in November, and used a combination of points 1 (family/friends) and 2 (mail forwarding).
About a week ago, I received my shipping confirmation, and i’ve since been tracking the camera shipment with a stalker’s minuteness. ;)
That also means that I can give you first-hand experience from my Lytro order, and you’ll find that in the next part of the article.
Placing the Lytro order from Austria
As mentioned above, i had a little help from close friends in the United States, who were kind enough to fill in their own credit card information into the order form. I reimbursed them through Paypal for the amount charged by Lytro.
For the U.S. shipping address, I chose Shipito because their service charges and online ratings looked very good. Having the package forwarded by a mail forwarding company also meant that (1) my friends wouldn’t have make even more efforts and (2) I would get cheaper shipping rates.
Lytro shipment: UPS – Shipito – DHL Express
The camera was mailed out on April 2 from Indianapolis, IN via UPS Ground. “Special Instructions” said that delivery required a signature. The UPS Tracking service gave an estimate of 3 business days, and the camera was delivered to Shipito in the morning of the third day, and had been signed for. Great!
Just an hour later, Shipito had weighed, measured and photographed the package (package weight and size: 1.4 lbs, 9.60 x 7.80 x 6.00 in // 0.6 kg, 24.4 x 19.8 x 15.3 cm), and asked for shipping information and payment of the shipping costs (DHL Express, 1-3 business days: 49.69 $ postage + 7.98 $ insurance; plus 8.50 $ service fee). The necessary information (customs declaration, li-ion battery statement, insurance information and shipping address) and money was transferred by 2:30 pm, and the package went out that same evening. Thank you very much, Shipito!
What surprised me a lot was that DHL had processed and forwarded the package on friday evening, and had it on an airplane by saturday early morning – on the easter weekend, too! By the time i finished this article, it was last scanned in Leipzig (Germany) – on the afternoon of easter sunday. Kudos to DHL!
Customs fees
I’ll keep update this part as soon as my Lytro camera has cleared customs and is delivered. :)
My very own Lytro was delivered on April 11, after being in customs clearance for just three hours. According to Austrian customs, the customs rate is 6 % of the “total foreign value”, consisting of the product value plus foreign tax and shipping. An additional Austrian sales tax of 20 % is also applied. Customs fees totalled to 67,85 Euro (Austria) which was a little lower than expected.
Alltogether, the package took only 9 days to get from Indianapolis to California, and then on to Innsbruck, Austria.
How did Austrian customs react to and/or deal with missing CE markings and missing declaration of conformity? Any hints on that would be very welcome, since Luxembourg customs blocked the entry of my camera.
I’m sorry to hear that. All I got was the additional customs fee bill attached to the package.