Massdrop fuck it up yet again: missing customs declaration

[scottc]

Today, I was supposed to receive my Whitefox kit in the post. What I received instead, was a letter from the post office demanding for a copy of my national ID number, national ID card, original invoice and lawfully translated invoice of the kit.

Massdrop are well-known for making a complete mess of customs forms, but this time they went on step further and just omitted the entire form from my package, it seems, as the letter that I received states that there were NO details about the package.

Has anyone else in Europe had issues receiving their Whitefox?

[Muirium]

Look on the bright side: you could mock up quite the receipt…

Jokes aside, I don't envy your position. Do wonder why you opted for your home address when you've got that handy stateside office. Must be the irresistible draw of Whitefox.

[scottc]

It's not so handy anymore, unfortunately. No more trips until at least the end of the year. I had to ask the VP of Engineering to ferry my aluminium Filco case across to the London office in his checked luggage for me!

[Muirium]

Valuable Property.

[Spikebolt]

I always have to present these documents (and a hefty sum) even when everything is properly filled. I wouldn't trust your customs office, TBH, it's probably a big and heavy box so there's money to be collected

[scottc]

I don't know, the form explicitly says that there wasn't any info... Hopefully they're just lying!

[Muirium]

MassDrop just confused Ireland for Boston. Simple enough mistake to make.

[scottc]

Not Ireland! I'm not living there right now. Though I can certainly see the resemblance, I think you'd notice the difference after a single syllable was uttered from a person's mouth...

[HzFaq]

I've not even had a shipping notification for my barebones kit yet...

[scottc]

Really? Mine was shipped about two weeks ago. I think they're being shipped in batches, though, and I was before the first 1,000.

[HzFaq]

Me too, infact I think I ordered before you...I can remember talking to you about it just before you pulled the trigger .

I'm quietly hoping they've just forgotten to update my order or something, not that I'm in a massive rush, it would just be nice to know what's going on.

[cookie]

2 of my 3 Massdrop orders endet up in my Tax Office... The original quote of the Employee there was "We almost never trust the customs form of a parcel from the United States, they tend to lie about the value and content. Or completely screw it up"

With that information I'd say it's not Massdrops fault it's a general issue with packages from the U.S.

[Stabilized]

This is one of the reasons why I stay away from Massdrop, and it annoys me that so many of the keycap GBs end up there (especially SA profile ones).

[Muirium]

Forget all the unicorn puke sets there. The one to watch is:

workshop-f7/hi-profile-pbt-dye-sub-the- ... 10805.html

Beamspring profile, MX mount, Matteo designed dyesubs. Doesn't get bigger than that! And hopefully this one's MassDrop free. Or we'll have to proxy.

[cookie]

Well I personally kinda like the idea of massdrop but the execution is flawed

[chuckdee]

Well I personally kinda like the idea of massdrop but the execution is flawed

I've had less problems from them than from privately run drops. So opinions vary.

[DanielT]

Well I personally kinda like the idea of massdrop but the execution is flawed

I've had less problems from them than from privately run drops. So opinions vary.

+1 , I'd rather deal with MD than trust some guy with my money with some small exceptions.

[HzFaq]

Did you get yours sorted Scott? I got tracking at the start of the week and just now got a £25 customs bill today...

[scottc]

Yeah, I am pretty disappointed that it's come to it but honestly I would probably trust a shill corporation like MD over GBs run by random people I've never heard of these days. That's not because of any merit of theirs, though.

I got the Whitefox yesterday, finally! I'm lucky to have gotten it with the half-assed customs form on it. Thankfully customs let me away with a Google-translated version of the receipt rather than anything more serious, unlike what they had in the list of demands that arrived at my door a week or two before. I paid roughly 30 euro, so probably roughly the same as you, Hz.

The good news is that it's completely worth it! The kit is really sublime (no pun intended, I went for the barebones version without caps after all so no sublimation involved). Really fantastic quality. Hats off to matt3o and input club. If all of IC's kits are of this standard, I think I'll be buying from them in the future!

[HzFaq]

That's good to hear, did you get TMK up and running on it or are you using the tool?

[scottc]

Still using the web configurator for now. I reckon I'll try to figure out how to use HaaTa's KLL directly and if I like it I won't need to try TMK.

[matt3o]

planning on trying TMK firmware next! I'll post source files of all layouts (I don't think we have all covered).

(I hear your pain scottc! I'll talk AGAIN to MD about custom declarations)

[Thumper]

Mine was send on 3rd this month via plane to Germany. Since then I haven't gotten updates from our post office. Most likely it's stuck as customs.

[scottc]

Thanks matt3o, source files for TMK would be really cool! Can we flash TMK with dfu-util like the IC firmware or is it more involved?

MD are unfortunately repeat offenders for this. When I got some Granite R2 kits I spent like $50 or $60, well under the customs threshold in Ireland, but they assumed that each kit was a common kit ($30 or $35) so put $120-ish on the declaration so I had to pay a tonne of customs! Thankfully they realised that they screwed up that time and refunded me the amount which was really good of them, so I can applaud their customer service for that interaction. This time the damage was thankfully not so serious, just an extra week of waiting which is fine.

@Thumper Try the DHL global mail tracking number that came on your invoice on some different tracking sites. What they seem to do is have that tracking number for US -> DE sorting center, then a new number from DE sorting center -> destination. So the tracking number will probably never work in your local postal system. I find that the mobile app Track Checker is really good at figuring that stuff out and checks a load of carriers.

[HzFaq]

Yeah, source files for TMK would be epic, thanks matt3o.

I got my board today, totally agree with scott about the quality, it looks amazing. Can't wait to get it built now, which is going to make desoldering the donor switches even more frustrating .

[matt3o]

I just worked a bit on TMK firmware for the whitefox today and it works like a charm. compiled and flashed with dfu-util without a glitch!

I'll be making some updates to the matrix tomorrow and post a step-by-step.