points by megous 1 day ago | 0 comments
There's no escaping the fact that EU fucked the hobbyists that previously were able to ship stuff not even made or available in EU at sane prices from china. I f I were to buy things I did in last 12 or so years based on current rules, I'd pay like 200% on customs/taxes and bullshit charges like 3+EUR per made up category on invoice or whatever it's now.
Hopefully, it will put a downwards price pressure on middlemen/resellers, now that buying directly is prohibitively expensive.
[–] sunaookami 1 day ago
>bullshit charges like 3+EUR per made up category
Add 2€ to that for the new handling fee from 1st November onward.
[–] gorbypark 22 hours ago
"Fun" fact, they charge VAT on top of the new "handling fees" (aka tariffs). Each item category is now 6.05 euros extra in Spain (5 euros + 21% VAT).
They also seem to have no way to really tell item categories apart, so it's effectively a fee per single item. You can buy multiples and only get the extra charge once, however for example, if you order one ESP32-C3 and one ESP32-C6 from the same vendor, you will likely be hit with 2 * 6.05 even though technically they'd fall under the same item category.
[–] PorciiVorbesc 1 day ago
It would be cool if the EU would also find ways to add value to the economy, instead of just adding more taxes that extract value from it.
EU doesn't care about hobbyists, it cares about protecting the interests of the monopolies of the major retailers who lobby the politicians, who disliked that people could order the same Chinese shit they sell at 100x markups, directly from China, and cutting them off as middle-men.
But don't worry, in their heads, this way we'll get to on-shore our HW/electronics manufacturing industry back. Any day now. I can already see the factories pumping out ESP32s "Made in the EU", popping up everywhere across the EU, creating jobs and a competitive electronics industry. Alarm clock buzzes