Unfortunately, we are already marking shipping down 30% below our actual cost to Europe for Postal Service, FedEX and UPS.
Do you know of less expensive options?
It is a very challenging problem. Free Postage is never Free. Postage is either calculated transparently or hidden in the price of each product. Some will overpay and others will underpay but the seller has to determine an average cost and account for it. Shipping is the largest individual cost for our business. Shipping cost is also very different based on location. For a kit bundle (kit and cable) these are the average costs:
Shipping in the US is <$20
Shipping to Canada is ~$45
Shipping to the UK is ~$70
Shipping to South Africa is ~$365
We could offer free shipping worldwide and add about $60 to the price of each kit, but now domestic customers or those who buy more than one product would over pay to subsidize higher cost locations. With so many options for charging stations, we could not raise the prices in the US (and not see a huge drop in sales) to cover shipping cost to Europe. A side affect of hiding shipping fees in the product price is Customs fees goes up, so many customers pay more in the end.
Our policy that has worked well is to price products at a reasonable cost with honest priced shipping at or below our cost. We NEVER mark up shipping.
There are 2 problems with US shipping to EU.
- shipping price (in my case 81 USD)
- duty taxes (~20%)
Total cost for an advanced kit, for me, is 700 USD and this is a problem.
I recommend importing like parts in Europe and putting them together here.
Unfortunately, OpenEVSE does not have any control over either of those 2 problems shipping prices or customs duty/taxes/fees.
OpenEVSE kits and the OpenEVSE based EmonEVSE station are available from a re-seller in Europe OpenEnerygMonitor.
https://guide.openenergymonitor.org/integrations/ev-charging/
Ivan Jakesevic
Can you provide other shipping methods to Europe/Sweden. $71 for shipping is quite expensive.
That is one of the main reasons why i am not ordering.