Why is shipping from China to Taiwan more than to USA?

[ciao]

The C-200 ships from Mainland China. It ships to USA (via DHL) for $29.

I live in Taiwan. Why exactly is the shipping to Taiwan (via DHL) $39.

What's up with that? I can see China from my front porch. Its about 100 times closer to China than the USA.

It seems unreasonable and it gives me pause. Makes me look at the many competing units from WD, ASUS, Apacer...

[fan9]

Mine was shipped to Beijing...within the same country and it costs more.

[ciao]

I guess nobody cares about us communists...

[HeartWare]

You really should ask DHL as it is their price structure - not PopCorn/Syabas'.

[chris57]

And its hardly a bug or feature either is it?

[Steve.Young]

(11-30-2009 11:14 AM)ciao Wrote:  I guess nobody cares about us communists...

I don't remember Taiwan being a communist country last time I was there

[ciao]

Thanks for playing, but I see there is no answer to my question.

Actually this is Syabas' problem for 2 reasons. 1. All companies get a kickback from DHL anyway and 2. It was one of the reasons I didn't buy their player.

There sure are a lot of alternatives http://www.iboum.com/artkill/tablesort.php

[ciao]

(12-01-2009 11:42 AM)chris57 Wrote:  And its hardly a bug or feature either is it?

If there is a better sub-forum for this topic, feel free to move the thread there. Maybe its not a bug, but its what prevented me from buying the A-200. Is PCH interested in that or not?

Anyway, as iboum blog said recently "The high-end Media Player section is in a state of crisis. Even the cheapest Media Players will now play every file perfectly and are receiving very active support, making the case for spending 2 or 3 times the amount on something high-end very dubious."

I'm going with a WDTV Live. 95% of the features of the A-200 at 35% of the price. I'm sorry to be such a jerk, its just that PCH owners are so infuriatingly smug...

[cheaper_popcorn]

Let us do some maths.

The WDTV Live is 99 USD.
The A-200 is 179 USD.

35% of 179 is 62.65. Even if you factor in the shipping cost, 35% is still only 76.3.

However, at stated, the WDTV Live is 99 USD. Can you spot the discrepancy?

[texags08]

if yours only cost $10 more than mine consider yourself lucky. seems plenty of international folks are paying a lot more.

[Steve.Young]

Well, we have no kickbacks as you have described. Sincerely, honestly...we try to get the best price for our customers. It's kinda why in the UK, we terminated TNT for their crazy fee's they tried to charge our customers. And TNT China + TNT UK don't know what the hell is going on between the two.

[ciao]

(01-13-2010 04:56 AM)cheaper_popcorn Wrote:  Let us do some maths.

The WDTV Live is 99 USD.
The A-200 is 179 USD.

35% of 179 is 62.65. Even if you factor in the shipping cost, 35% is still only 76.3.

However, at stated, the WDTV Live is 99 USD. Can you spot the discrepancy?

My bad. What I meant was,

The WDTV Live is 119 USD (before and) after tax and shipping.
The C-200 is 328 USD after shipping. I'll not mention tax yet.

119/328 = 36.28%

Actually that is also incorrect. If I ship to Taiwan, shipping is $39. I might also get hit with customs. If I ship to California, after tax and $29 shipping my cost is 358.10. So in California, I can buy 3 WDTV live, for less than the price of 1 C-200.

Steve, thank you for your reply. I should be more specific about my use of the word kickback. What I meant was, most businesses tell their customers "hey, the DHL (UPS, FedEx...) rack rate to ship to you is $30". But at the end of the month, DHL comes back to the business and says, hey you did $100,000 in shipping with us, we are going to kick 20% of that back to you. The customer does not see this or get any of it. The more you ship the bigger the kickback. Its designed to get companies to pick one shipping firm and give them all their business. You may protest that some of this is out of your hands. But some consumers take the trouble to determine the total out of pocket cost of the different NMT by the time it is in their hands. If you want to reach those consumers, you need to develop other delivery channels and shipping channels.

[chris57]

(01-13-2010 09:16 AM)ciao Wrote:  Steve, thank you for your reply. I should be more specific about my use of the word kickback. What I meant was, most businesses tell their customers "hey, the DHL (UPS, FedEx...) rack rate to ship to you is $30". But at the end of the month, DHL comes back to the business and says, hey you did $100,000 in shipping with us, we are going to kick 20% of that back to you. The customer does not see this or get any of it. The more you ship the bigger the kickback. Its designed to get companies to pick one shipping firm and give them all their business.

Most businesses do NOT operate in this way, it's not the way courier negotiations are undertaken in my experience at all in dealing with couriers. You also try to make it sound very shady, not something any reputable company would be involved with.

I was a Distribution Manager responsible for amongst other shipping, couriers. What you actually do in practice is tell then upfront what the size of the business you are going to give them is, i.e how many parcels and the average cube and weight of each parcel. They then come back to you with a few different proposals, a package price or a kg or cube price. You compare that against others and choose the best price/service for you.
If you then give them less business they will at the next time you need to negotiate prices lt you know this or if you gave more then you let them know when negotiating next time. Nothing shady just open and honest business practive which you seem very unfamiliar with.

[ciao]

chris57, thank you for your reply. My beef is simply that most businesses try to pass off the shipping cost to the customer, as "well we just charge you what DHL charges... this is a DHL fee not us." In fact we see some of this above in the thread. But in fact shipping charges are often a profit center for the business. Is it your position that when PCH charges $29 to get the box from China to California, or $39 to get the box from China across the strait and into Taiwan, that that $29/$39 is at the end of the day what they pay to DHL? I am skeptical. When you were Distribution Manager, I don't know if you were shipping to end users, but did you pass through those same negotiated rates to the customer, or did you add some mark up, so that your department was a profit center.

---

I actually feel a bit sorry for PCH, because WD has an unfair advantage. WD and Seagate are in fact in a position to sell their boxes cheap or even at a loss, for the simple reason that it supports their hard disk business. I know PCH has worked hard and has a very powerful solution. Its just that the disk drive manufacturers have a bigger picture business model.

[chris57]

Distribution is never a profit centre, it is always a cost centre along with warehousing, and other customer services. Any business that is setup to have distribution as a profit centre won't be around very long. It's madness all any business tries to do is recoup it's distribution costs. Costs are not solely the price you pay the courier, you have to add on staffing costs, heating/light, etc. etc. So any change in costs is taken into account and budgeted for or finds reallocated if not budgeted. The last thing any company wants to do is to pass along costs to the customer as that may mean a lost sale. Only when it becomes impossible to absorb the cost would a company ass along an additional cost.

The Company I worked for as Distribution Manager was the UK No.1. in over the counter medicines and other chemist products. We shipped to the major grocery chains in 40 foot lorries and then all the way down to the odd parcel to a small shop in the middle of no-where. My annual budget was £5M with a fleet of 20 lorries and the courier business approx £1M. We also shipped to all the hundreds of reps, trade shows, etc.

WD/Seagate have more work to offer couriers and so will be able upfront to negotiate a lower shipping rate than someone who ships less, its how much ££££'s of business you have for them to bid over that matters. That's why when we get the likes of TNT UK trying to slap an extra £15 on us at the delivery end it is unfair as TNT won the business based on a price for delivery not a price plus a £15 surcharge. That's dubious business practice.

You seem to think that delivery charges are broken down by whoever wins the business into a price per delivery per country. It will not work like that. What will be given is a price per delivery, or a price per kilo, or a price per cube. No country specific delivery costs will be known or charged unless the courier has some explanation as to why local conditions dictate any difference in price, the courier would have to justify why the price on which they were given the negotiated price is now not being adhered to etc.