Test Report: Ordering a Lytro LightField camera from Europe

Test Report: Ordering a Lytro from Europe (Photo: Mashable) 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!

UPS Ground - Tracking my Lytro shipment online

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!

Shipito overview: Packages in Warehouse

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!

DHL Express - Tracking my Lytro shipment online

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.

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2 Responses

  1. Vincent says:

    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.

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