Battery order fom HK

wollins · July 21, 2014, 08:59:41 AM

Anyone order batteries (lipos) from Hobby King lately? Just wondering what the wait time is these days. Last time I ordered some packs from them (in March) it took 41 days to arrive!

Colin

bfeist · July 21, 2014, 07:49:36 PM

i'm currently waiting.....for 4 weeks now

Canuke · July 21, 2014, 09:06:00 PM

I'm currently at 6 weeks. I emailed HK to look into it. They have it tracked them to Vancouver about 2 weeks ago. They offered to investigate further, if I don't receive them this week I will.

Polecat · July 21, 2014, 10:22:31 PM

I have a shipment at Vancouver since July 5. It might be better to go to HK in the US and pay the extra costs of shipping.

sihinch · July 22, 2014, 06:50:55 AM

I know Chi, a TEMAC member, is looking to import and sell batteries. He has some samples to test right now.....

electroflyer · July 22, 2014, 09:50:02 AM

Use Fedex, It comes within 4 days. Only con is you will be hit with a second fee for processing. To me it is worth the additional money especially during the nice weather.
Glenn

bfeist · July 22, 2014, 10:59:21 AM

@electroflyer , there was no FedEx option when I ordered. I specifically looked. Just useless EMS and regular. Went with regular. Whatever, I still have some puffies to fly with for the rest of the season. Even with this inconvenience, the nano-tech batteries were half the price of local ThunderPower batteries.

Polecat · July 22, 2014, 11:30:07 AM

Quote from: electroflyer on July 22, 2014, 09:50:02 AM
Use Fedex, It comes within 4 days. Only con is you will be hit with a second fee for processing. To me it is worth the additional money especially during the nice weather.
Glenn

Glenn How much was the extra fee, was it just the $10.00 hit. @electroflyer

electroflyer · July 22, 2014, 11:46:52 AM

Hi,
I think the brokerage fee is $12.95. I am not sure if it is based on value or just a one time fee to look after customs, but in a pinch it was better than watching the season disappear with crappy batteries.

sihinch · July 22, 2014, 12:01:54 PM

I think my last FEDEX fee for lipos from HK was around $15

electroflyer · July 22, 2014, 12:07:24 PM

Well now that the EMS shipping is routed to Sinapore or wherever, I would rather pay a fee from Fedex and know that my items are here quickly. The interesting thing is, my orders seemed to be placed in a faster Que when using Fedex. May be a coincidence, but I have had other orders sit for days before any word as to status when using even EMS express.

wollins · July 22, 2014, 02:33:26 PM

I think the whole reason that most order from HK is the affordability of the products (especially lipos) but unfortunately if one has to factor in customs, taxes etc it can sometimes negate any saving regardless of the time it took to get here.

So I guess the question becomes ... if one uses the FEDEX option (to keep wait time reasonable) what's the rate of "extra" charges that this option incurs? Does anyone know? Ie: for X amount of declared value you would have to pay X% in customs ,taxes etc? Would give people a ball park percentage I guess of what charges to expect.

BTW, I ordered $126 worth of lipos through another mail order company the other day and used the FedEx option and the total "extra" charges came to CDN $40 approx. So I guess based on that scenario I could use around 32% to calculate future FedEx "extra" charges?

Thanks!

Colin

sihinch · July 22, 2014, 03:05:58 PM

Of the $15 that I was last charged by FedEx, I think $10 was admin fees. The remaining $5 was the actual duty.

Wouldn't the actual duty be %13 of declared value?

Papa · July 22, 2014, 06:20:44 PM

There is no duty on the import of LiPo batteries.

You may be charged Sales Tax which in Ontario is now HST at 13%.

Jack.

wollins · July 22, 2014, 08:09:41 PM

Well, I've been asking the good folks over at RC Canada the same thing and the general consensus is all about ordering from the USA warehouse order with the Purolater shipping option.

Funny, I just set up two dummy orders ... one "regular" and one USA (using the Purolater option) and the purolater shipping was LESS! ($29.30 VS $29.99)

I'm totally good with spending LESS to get it FASTER!

Colin