Hi,
some time ago there were rumors that the librem5 would be shipped from Germany to all buyers from the EU. However, I could not find any official statement for this on the purism website or the forums. Could somebody from purism provide some more information?
Careful though - on their Librem pages they clearly say they do not ship outside Germany. Not sure that changes once the Librem 5 becomes available.
Can you please post the link where they say something about shipping the librem5 in Germany.
The handling of the Librem5 phone is still in discussion. It is correct that FLOSS-Shop currently does resale the Librem Laptops. The intention is though to move this under a Purism umbrella latest until the phone ships, which then will also mean that European shipments will come from Europe. At least this is the plan right now, a lot of details need to be sorted out about how this can be done properly (starting from import and stock handling over VAT down to nasty details like WEEE).
Cheers
nicole
@nicole.faerber Thanks for the quick reply. So from what I understand from your answer, it is very likely that a Librem 5 pre-ordered before January 31st to an address in Europe will be shipped from within the EU and that it wouldn’t make any difference if this is a German or any other EU address. Is this correct?
I’m keeping my eye on this too. The phone is double my phone budget as it is. I’d appreciate a decision before January 31. I would make a decision before pre-order ends and post a blog post about this to get more European pre-orders.
I would assume they ship it directly to me from the US if I pre-order - including the very likely additional VAT and customs to be added. Though it would be nice if they found a way to avoid that for sure.
so in terms of cost and delivery time what would shipping from Europe bring ?
For Europeans no vat and customs, which can increase the price about 20-25%
What do you mean? Don’t we always have to pay VAT anyway? I’m from the Netherlands and it’s 21% here and I don’t think it matters if it comes directly from the USA or from Germany VAT wise.
I was wondering about this too. Becaue as far is i undesrstod in the us the prices are always without vat. So purism has to make 599 as profit. And if they would sell it in the EU for the 599 the vat would be paid by puris.
Or am i wrong assuming that the 599 is exc VAT in the us?
I’m trying to find out “who” is paying the VAT and where/when now. I thought I had to pay Purism 1.21x because of VAT because they would have to pay, but I need to pay the deliveryman, seeing most of the delivery companies state on their website if you need to pay VAT and you can’t at the door they will take the package back with them.
And additional to the VAT, you have also to pay the custom handling costs, made by the delivery company (at least in The Netherlands) if you order from the US. So I agree that it probably would be beneficial to ship from within the EU somehow. To avoid extra customs costs, but also to be able to do a bulk shipment to the EU, and distribute from there with lower costs.
You (and me) are paying the VAT. The 599 is without Tax - if you import stuff from the US you have to pay the VAT (in my case 19%) (so 599 plus 19%) and ADDITIONALLY a tariff (between 0% and 40% - there’s a list which import results in which costs) - so it can be quite expensive for europeans to back the Librem 5.
Smartphones in particular have a 0% tariff in germany, so it’s not a big deal.
(Results in 599 + 19% + 0%)
Import tariffs for phones are 0% in the Netherlands as well. Aaaah so I need to ask for the money I added in the wire transfer for VAT back, and use it to pay the VAT in person xd
IMHO, all this discussion about VAT and custom handling or tax goes in a wrong direction.
When I paid my USD 599, I did not bought any product because there wasn’t (and still isn’t) any product to buy. I donated the money for an OpenSource project with vague target of building something new. The money (my money) was used to pay developers (…) in this project. It could have even ended up that there wouldn’t be (or even will not be) any product at the end of the day. When Puism later sends out the devices to the backers of the project, we all do not know what the real value of it is. For me it has a high usage value (a Linux phone!!!). For the normal Android or iPhone user it’s perhaps just a null value. And Purism should not declare the box as a bought product, but declare the box as a gift and put a label on it “We thank you for your donation and your trust in the future. Here we have a small gadget for you to remember our campaign”.
That’s my humble opinion about. And it’s the full truth of the story.
Matthias
I totaly agree with you, but i‘m not sure the tax departments will se it the same. So it is a good idea to figure out what one has to pay to get the phone.
So purism should mark it as gift but i would keep cash for the post man by hand.
One could try to get the tax money back afterwards.
Weeellllll… Your own opinion doesn’t really matter in this case, it’s the customs opinion which matters and they clearly won’t see that as a donation or every kickstarter campaign could do the same. (I have experience with this, and it doesn’t work)
Surely for us customers it would be better to declare that as a gift, but if something’s going wrong Purism will get problems with tax fraud charges and I don’t want this to happen.