News and information from Europe πͺπΊ
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Important bit of information: China gets subsidised parcel fee under an agreement of the World Post Association. They pay less for postage than European businesses shipping within the continent.
Why is this not changed? Why all these additional taxes and hoops when they could simply cancels these subsidies?
Good question. I guess you have to ask those responsible.
It's managed by the Universal Postal Union, which is part of the UN, and the organisation has been in effect in one form or another since 1874 with 192 members currently. International treaties between so many countries are extremely difficult to reform. It's much easier to make a new treaty than reform an existing one because there are so many vested interests in the current system.
In this case, the subsidy is designed to help developing countries have fair access to the global post system. But when it was created, it was likely not envisioned that a developing country might become a rich country, nor that the postal system would become such an important part of e-commerce.
They're implicit subsidies.
So here it goes: there's an international treaty saying basically "if a letter from your country is delivered in my contry, I'll deliver it for free and vice versa". So, you pay your national post some "international handling" so they e.g. deliver it to China, but in China the national post is now responsible for distribution and last mile for free, they don't see a part of your postage.
So it's subsidized now by the Chinese post basically: they only charge cents for "international shipping" to their citizens and businesses, last mile is handled for free from the local national post offices.
That system obviously was designed to work frictionless and easy in a time, where there was no globalized market to speak of.
It's not so easy to reform and just cancel it might be a disadvantage as well: then all your other mailing stuff needs renegotiating as well. Just imagine the horror in canceling the treaty, and then you need to sit down with dealmaker Trump who sees an opportunity in order to get the US Post to handle your mail π±
easier to add a new agreement than cancel an old i guess. treaties are hard
I've wondered for years how they manage free shipping for all the small shit.
The only people that can import cheap Chinese stuff are corporations... don't you dare bypassing their money making schemes
No, thatβs a very naive and uninformed viewpoint. The EU is being flooding with 100s of millions of packages with value-free SHEIN and temu stuff, the delivery services even do not know how to handle it anymore. It is a tremendous danger for local industry, it is very bad for the environment. Do some online research, you will be impressed with the impact of these cheap products literally flooding into the European Union.
Aren't those same cheap products coming in through corporations that sell it under some brand at triple the cost?
It's not the same stuff, though. A lot of these products do not fulfill any product safety law. There have been lots tests of random products sold on these platforms, showing that many are unsafe and/or dangerous (just google). A business sourcing from China has to ensure that sold products are safe and fulfill legal requirements. And yes, for this "service" they charge higher prices, and sometimes even unjustifiedly.
Right in the article they cite the analysis has numbers on a few groups of products like protrction equipment, makeup, and whether they pass EU standards. 60%-something do not. That also means 30%-something pass EU standards. That's a lot of quality cheap product. Of course as a consumer you can't tell whether you're getting something from the 35% pile or the 65% one. But that doesn't detract from the point of a lot of the cheap stuff in the category is the same stuff when it comes to EU standards.
Here's an anecdote - years ago I really wanted a magnetic USB cable. Being skeptical of AliExpress stuff, especially electrical, I found a North American brans called Volta. Bought a cable. Cost me CAD $20 or $30. Some time after, I was browsing AliExpress for some specialty ebike parts that aren't imported in Canada, I took a look at the magnetic cables they got. After a few pages of results I found a suspiciously similar cable to the Volta sold by the manufacturer itself. $3-4 for a set with a few magnetic tips. Ordered one. Once it came, I meticulously compared it to the Volta. It was identical in every way. It even failed in the same weak spot after a couple of years of use as the Volta. So yeah, while not everything is the same, not everything is not the same either.
Side note - the AliExpress prices are not the low prices available in other cheaper retailers in China. Stuff on AliExpress already has significant markups. Volta did not pay $3-4 for that cable. They prolly paid $0.50-1 even if that much. They made exorbitant profit.
Sure, go and buy the stuff if you want. Personally, I do not have the competence to know which products contain harmful chemicals, for instance. I am not questioning that a lot of products are badly made quality wise. I'm just saying that any European retailer / producer is legally responsible to ensure the product is safe and not harmful. And testing costs money, believe it or not. (Yes they carry out tests. I have worked for a large retailer)
Look at who funded and lobbied for this, this isn't about protecting EU manufacturing, most of these companies manufacture their goods outside the EU and charge exorbitant prices for them.
This is once again taking the power out of the proles hands.
| Parent Corporate Member | Key Retail Brands & Subsidiaries | Annual Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Schwarz Group | Lidl, Kaufland, PreZero | β¬185.6 Billion |
| REWE Group | BILLA, REWE, Penny, Toom Baumarkt, BIPA | β¬100.4 Billion |
| Ahold Delhaize | Albert Heijn, Delhaize, Alfa Beta, Mega Image, Maxi, Albert | β¬92.35 Billion |
| Carrefour Group | Carrefour, Carrefour Market, Express, AtacadΓ£o, Cora, Match | β¬91.48 Billion |
| Tesco PLC | Tesco, Tesco Express, One Stop | β¬82 Billion |
| Inditex | Zara, Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius | β¬36 Billion |
| H&M Group | H&M, COS, Monki, Weekday, & Other Stories, ARKET | β¬21 Billion |
| Colruyt Group | Colruyt, Okay, Spar | β¬11.19 Billion |
Credit to https://www.reddit.com/user/Interesting_Pie_319/ for the data.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Aliexpress/comments/1ugpyoe/i_dug_around_a_bit_and_found_exactly_who_is/
The difference is that these companies have to adhere to EU regulations, e.g. on harmful chemicals. Cheap Chinese products famously do not, often times to an absurd degree, exceeding limits by thousands of times.
Then regulate the products and impose fines?
and not forget sites like temu burn money to sell this stuff cheap while these have to actually run a profitable business. But 100 Billion Alibaba and 50 Billion Temu are the good guys in this, i guess
Kinda seems like a tax on the poor for being unable to afford better products.
You don't get better products. You get products without safety testing, warranty or support. Clothes from some eastern brands have high amounts of chemicals that are forbidden in Europe because they cause cancer or infertility. Some type of escooter was banned in the UK some years ago because the dodgy electronics where responsible for multiple house fires. Iot devices or computers from some no name brand won't get updates if a hacker finds exploits to mine Bitcoins on it, or spy on you and capture your logins from your cheap temu wifi router.
You should reread their comment, you agree with each other.
You are right, sorry. I did not have my coffee yet.
Should be specified that is not specific to Chinese imports, it's to any import from any country outside of EU
In the meantime Chinese companies built warehouses in Europe, which are importing the cheap goods en grosse. You're buying from a Chinese supplier, but the parcel is sent out from Europe.
Much more easy to regulate those. That's kind of the point.
In the meantime Chinese companies built warehouses in Europe, which are importing the cheap goods en grosse.
They probably weren't, at least for the things being described here, as the article is talking about de minimis.
The de minimis exception basically let low-value packages through without paying import tariffs.
There's some reason to do that
it'd be more expensive to process the (many) low-value packages.
However, this also meant that if someone imported something in small, low-value amounts, they didn't have to pay import tariffs, whereas people doing bulk imports did.
This was a major reason for the explosion of Chinese online retailers in the West, like Temu. They'd sell something that was shipped directly from China, which meant that they didn't need to pay import tariffs on it. Traditional importers would import a large batch and would need to pay import tariffs, and then distribute the large batch from within the country in question, which penalized traditional retail.
Can they put an exclusion for electronic components? 90% of the shit isn't manufactured in the EU and local companies buy it from China and charge you 10x the price.
Mouser isn't a bad option
This is where the DIY electronics hobbyist scene in the EU dies.
Good going corpos, you win. I'll just consume your media and goon at home.
on the principle that's fine, but it also means that DHL will add ~~6.50β¬~~ 7.50β¬ fees on top of that here in germany, which you can only pay in cash upon delivery, and they don't even carry change.
edit: it's 7.50
Not true. Parcels can be delievered to DHL shop where you can pay with several methods (I already did so). Yet the fee is indeed annoying when comparing with the 3 β¬ cause
e-commerce in Europe is laughably bad no wonder people are turning to Temu and China and abroad in general. It's either Amazon or outdated brick stores with their own archaic tech that works sometimes, and surprises you with a couple extra fees every single checkout.
The only redemption right now is Shopify rollout for boosting small shops which is hard to mess up but even that is being overtaken by scam spam.
The service is just so bad that people will wait 2 weeks for potentially dangerous products and deal with customs just to save cup of coffee worth of money. The service is the issue not anything else.
It not just per parcel, but per product category. Multiple categories in one parcel multiple times β¬3 customs.