Has anyone got their resistorfixed PowerPak..

No Carrier · Post by **No Carrier** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 12:58 am

tokumaru wrote:Yeah, my PowerPak arrived. Not at my home, but at the post office, where I'll have to pay more than 50% of the price in taxes to pick it up.

I'm really sorry to hear that. I send packages to Brazil all the time, and dealing with customs is such a hassle. Sometimes they check the packages, and sometimes they don't. I usually include a faked eBay printout with prices to try to trick them, and it has worked so far... and it is a shame that I have to lie to try to get a fair price, because the amount they charge is usually based on what they *think* something is worth, not the actual value.

NC

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 9:24 am

Is Brazil a extremist dictatorial gouvernement or something ? I've heard Chili was (at least until very recent times), but I havent heard anything that bad about Brazil.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 12:34 pm

No Carrier wrote:Sometimes they check the packages, and sometimes they don't. I usually include a faked eBay printout with prices to try to trick them, and it has worked so far...

This usually works, but sometimes they just don't believe it and charge based on what they think the goods are worth, like you said. I can usually get away with stuff I buy from Hong Kong, like NES clones, games and DVD's.

Anyway, this part from RetroZone's FAQ makes it all very clear:

RetroZone wrote:You are responsible for all import taxes and customs fees. Customs forms will not be forged.

This has made things very difficult for me. I may not even be able to get this money in time. I probably will, but this still sucks. I really wonder if it makes any difference for bunnyboy to declare the price as 50 bucks or if it's just funny to see people paying 160% of a price that already wasn't very attractive to begin with. Not complaining about the original price, it's expensive but I was up to it, it's just that in the end I'm paying just too much. I'm sorry if it does make a difference to you man, but this has been a pain for me.

the amount they charge is usually based on what they *think* something is worth, not the actual value.

So very true.

Bregalad wrote:Is Brazil a extremist dictatorial gouvernement or something ?

Not at all, we just have this crazy 60% import tax... It really sucks!

Post by **tepples** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:46 pm

tokumaru wrote:
Bregalad wrote:Is Brazil a extremist dictatorial gouvernement or something ?
Not at all, we just have this crazy 60% import tax... It really sucks!

Is there also an import tax on the value of licenses to produce products? Could you license PowerPak from bunnyboy, have it "MADE IN BRAZIL", and sell it to other Brazilians? Or would it be too expensive to import the components?

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 2:18 pm

tepples wrote:Is there also an import tax on the value of licenses to produce products? Could you license PowerPak from bunnyboy, have it "MADE IN BRAZIL", and sell it to other Brazilians? Or would it be too expensive to import the components?

I guess this would be possible, but I don't own a company or anything! =) Even if I were to do it as an individual, I wouldn't know where to begin! =)

I guess this is the reason we had better prices in videogame consoles back in the days of the 16-bit systems and until the Nintendo 64 I think... We had consoles manifactured here, so the prices were much better. Today's consoles and games are all imported, and a game that costs 50$ in the US easily costs about 125$ here. This is why everyone, no exception, has modded consoles and play only pirate games.

bunnyboy · Post by **bunnyboy** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 3:46 pm

I really wonder if it makes any difference for bunnyboy to declare the price as 50 bucks

Theres a couple reasons why that is a bad idea:

Its illegal! Forging the value is mail fraud, up to $10K in fines, $5K in civil payments, 5 years in jail, more penalties based on the difference in value. I guess I would put a lower value if you set up an escrow with $500K in case I got caught

Insurance is added for the value of the package. Not possible to get more than the value back, so if something happens the difference is just gone. The USPS should pay, I doubt the customer would agree to pay, so it falls on me.

Some countries require a receipt when picking up the package to show the paid value. If I write $50 and the receipt says $135 then the customer pays fines above the customs tax. Yes this did happen once, I accidently added wrong and had to refund double the difference to cover someones fines. Definitely lost money on that sale...

Lloyd Gordon · Post by **Lloyd Gordon** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:26 pm

I sympathize with people who get dinged for outrageous customs and taxes. However we in Canada are routinely charged ridiculously high charges for UPS or Fedex deliveries from the USA.

BunnyBoy has to be honest in this case or he could be in big trouble.

Luckily Bunnyboy sends his products by USPS and mine slipped by without being noticed by Canada Customs.

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 12:27 am

Random ramblings... Since you set the value of the product, couldn't you just charge a large handling fee like $100? For handling insurance, the item could be claimed one-of-a-kind or something that would be more costly to "replace" than it was to produce the original. Or hell, do the insuring yourself, which would probably be cheaper than the excessive customs fee would otherwise be.

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 1:33 am

Note that the high customs taxes are basically not so much a bad thing in general : They are here to made product of a country less expensive than import stuff, so to try to not have everyone import everything from other countries just to save $2 and to prevent transporting stuff that could get producted in the country, to prevent pollution.
This is especially a problem for food.
However, when it comes to video games this is of course slightly different...

oRBIT2002 · Post by **oRBIT2002** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 1:44 am

Hey bunnyboy, nice to see that you're back. How's it going with resistorfixing the Powerpaks you've got in return?

peppers · Post by **peppers** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 2:00 am

Bregalad wrote:Note that the high customs taxes are basically not so much a bad thing in general : They are here to made product of a country less expensive than import stuff, so to try to not have everyone import everything from other countries just to save $2 and to prevent transporting stuff that could get producted in the country, to prevent pollution.
This is especially a problem for food.
However, when it comes to video games this is of course slightly different...

True but this is only useful for industries witch exist in these countries, when it come to categories witch can only be imported it just leads to criminal activity by making black markets more popular

Post by **tepples** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 7:15 am

As far as I can tell, it's intended to provide an incentive to start some of those industries in Brazil.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 10:11 am

tepples wrote:As far as I can tell, it's intended to provide an incentive to start some of those industries in Brazil.

I guess you are right. But I still feel really bad that we have to pay outrageous prices for things that we just can't find for sale in our own country.

Although I live here in Brazil, most of my interests are things from other countries. I simply hate brazillian television, so everything I watch is either from Japan or the US. Music for me is practically from Japan only. The internet has sure helped me there, but when it comes to actual physical goods I'm still screwed.

I'm not much of a hardware guy, so I definitely can't do it. I'm sure there are a lot of people who can though... the MSX scene around here, for example, is pretty big, and the guys make new, interesting hardware all the time. Maybe the NES is just not as popular here to gather such a following.

srgilbert · Post by **srgilbert** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 12:31 pm

Looks like mine has been hung up at BB's post office since 7/2, I didn't think about him being on vacation! Hope he can get it before they ship it back to me, $8 one way was bad enough!

No Carrier · Post by **No Carrier** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 1:03 pm

srgilbert wrote:Looks like mine has been hung up at BB's post office since 7/2, I didn't think about him being on vacation! Hope he can get it before they ship it back to me, $8 one way was bad enough!

Mine is in the same situation, so says USPS.com

NC