I bought John Peatman's 18F452 book, with its PCB for the QwikFlash devi=
ce.  As far as I can find, Digi-Key
are the only people doing a kit of parts, and as there are a couple of o=
dd ones (the little LCD and the rotary
encoder, for example) I decided to buy the kit.

The Digi-Key price is $56.94 which didn't seem to bad - they add $6 hand=
ling fee for foreign orders, but for
shipping they only offered Global Express (I usually ask for Global Prio=
rity, which would have been about $6
to $9) and it doesn't tell you on the web site what it's going to cost -=
 it was $28.75, which I only
discovered after the order was placed.

Then when it arrived in Britain it attracted VAT/Duty on the item cost p=
lus shipping of =A39.42 (say $14) and
the real pain:  Parcelforce charged =A313.50 ($21) for collecting the =A3=
9.42!  Global Priority usually arrives
via Royal Mail, who charge a flat =A34 for collecting the customs charge=
s.

So after all I've ended up paying about $127 for something that started =
out just under $57...

Do any other Brits buy from Digi-Key, and do you end up being fleeced li=
ke this?

I've bought things from the US dozens of times, from eBay and web sites =
like Glitchbuster, Peter Anderson and
so on, and it's never come even close to this sort of cost - this is a p=
remium of 123%, compared to 30% for
the last thing I bought from a web site where I had to pay VAT.

Incidentally, Global Express doesn't seem to be any faster than Global P=
riority (and the names don't imply any
advantage either way, to my mind), and neither has insurance or tracking=
, so why would the shipping cost be
more than three times as much?  The transit time in this case was about =
6 days, which is at the upper limit
that Global Priority manages.

Finally, does anyone know how you can tell whether Parcelforce or Royal =
Mail will be used for the delivery,
based on which US shipping service is chosen?

Seeing the number of US messages saying that they like Digi-key I assume=
 that locally they are good, but one
thing's for sure: I shan't be buying from them again!

- Howard Winter
   St.Albans, England

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