Again, I appreciate the frustration. I do.

I also understand that a 13 year old has expectations. I have raised 5 of them. Each is very different from the other.

Please rest assured that the product is everything that it has been promoted to be. I have not stopped playing with the V4 I got for about a week. I have no doubt that you are a good parent and are just voicing your frustration. I do that from time to time myself.

I am fully confident that your son will get very excited when his roli arrives and he can use it, unless he decides to cancel his order. The issue that you face is that there is nothing else out there that comes close to what EZ-Robot is, so cancelling the order doesn't get him any closer to the goal of having an awesome robot. Learning patience is a very difficult thing for everyone. Learning at 13 will probably benefit your son more than you or he knows right now. It is directly opposed to everything else we learn in our society.

We most definitely wanted the product to ship before Christmas - as per the project schedule. However, the complications we faced in manufacturing the product lead to delays. We were unable to ship the product at Christmas because it would not have worked. I do not believe your son would have been happy with a non-working robot product.

There are thousands and thousands of orders - and only less than 10 frustrated customers. We apologize for the delay in videos, emails and publically on the forum. We are transparent to the reasons of the delay as well. I'm unsure what else I can say in response to your messages. The product is shipping and you will receive it soon as your order is shipped. We are shipping as fast as we can.

If my response is not satisfactory, please help me understand further?

As for duty or taxes, that is country specific. If you are GST/HST exempt, you must be aware on how to declare GST/HST taxed items. If you are not GST/HST except, then you must be familiar with taxes. If you have any questions about taxes, we can send links to websites with information specific to your country.

I'll throw in my 2 cents on the duties/ taxes since it seems to be a bit of a hot topic.

During the checkout process everyone is required to agree to terms and conditions. The second point on these is regarding shipping. It states "EZ-Robot is not responsible for duty and import taxes from international shipping. The EZ-Robot Package originates from our warehouse in Zhongshan, China." This has been there since day 1 and every single person that placed an order agreed to it. Since there still seem to be so many questions about this we'll look at putting it in a more visible space during the checkout process.

Canadians pay 5% GST and a variable rate on PST/HST/QST etc. On a $200 order, taxes alone could be close to $30 and duty could be added on top of that. The HST Richard was charged would be added on at any store and even if we were shipping internally within Canada, we would legally have to charge it. Upon charging it, we would have to hold the funds in a bank account and do remissions with the govt. at the end of the year. We would have to do the same for every single country, state, and province that we ship to accross the globe. Being a start-up, filling tax remissions to 142 countries would be a nightmare.

Since we ship to so many different countries we had 2 options.

1. Set up warehousing in different countries around the globe and pay for importation duties ourselves. This would require shipping from China to a warehouse and then from the warehouse to your homes.
2. Drop ship directly from China and have the customer pay importation duty and taxes.

I spent weeks doing cost analysis on these options, researching fulfillment centres and warehousing options in USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil, UK and Africa. When it finally came down to it, the second option was actually the least expensive and fastest for our users/ customers. If we set up warehousing and had to pay for multiple shipping points as well as duty, we would have to raise our prices to cover that as well. Either way, the costs are there and unfortunately there are no ways around it.

I personally do almost all of my shopping online. I buy towels, silverware, clothing, coffee makers etc. When ordering I always look to see where it is shipping from and where the product is manufactured to understand what taxes I'll be paying when the product arrives at my door. As more and more shopping happens online, the governments are cracking down to ensure that they are getting their cut. It used to be as easy as marking a package as a gift to not be dinged with duty, but that doesn't always work anymore. Even if a product is being shipped from USA to Canada, doesn't mean that the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) comes into effect. The only time that matters is if the product was manufactured in North America.

I guess the take-away from all of this is that we did our best to keep costs down, shipping times fast and choose a solution we can build off of over time. As we continue to grow we'll be doing everything we can to keep the taxes, duties and shipping costs to a minimum while still maintaining a competetive price on ezrobot products.

Thanks @d.cochran and @DJ-Sures.

I appreciate the prompt replies as well as the prompt replies from the EZ Robot team whenever I've sent email.

I've said my bit about the frustration that we've felt and the surprise about the unexpected customs duties. I'm not sure if the Zhonshan, China warehouse was mentioned in the shipping terms back when we ordered back in 2013, but I would agree to such duties if I ordered now. Still seems odd that a Canadian customer has to pay duty when buying from a Canadian store.

I'm very glad to see that things are indeed shipping and am prepared to pay the customs duty when Roli arrives.

To be honest... I paid $88 tax and duties on my order... $14 of which was duties and collection fees the rest was HST.... Really, not much to whine about.... I am happy...

The import duty disclaimer was there when I ordered in November. I recall looking up some of the regs for import into the US before I completed my order.

Alan

I received my order last week. It was shipped from China in three days. It's and awesome board, I didn't think the wifi would make any difference from B luetooth, but it's cool how it connects instantly. Thanks EZ robot

Great to hear @purple - thanks!