Before you buy Perceiption Neuron in Germany : BE WARNED


https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic349754.aspx
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By sbaerman - 7 Years Ago
Hi all,

I used the Black Friday offerings to buy a perceiption neuron kit. I am a convinced IClone User in Germany. But the customer experience with Perceiption Neuron arriving here is no fun at all.

PN is shipped from the US. And of course you have to pay taxes to import the product. So you have to pay 19% VAT plus some extra Taxes. That's not the problem. The problem is, that PN sends the product with UPS. And this is the problem. UPS will force you to pay extra fees. 

1) They charge you an extra service fee for doing the import (which is not included in the shipment fee from perceiption neuron)
2) They charge you an extra storage fee (5 EUR per day)
3) and you will have to pay that, because they will ask you to fill in extra form with lots of data and they will require to hand over an EORI number, which is a unique number for Taxes in Europe
4) Once they have gotten this, UPS will send the package without further notice to you and no prewarning : result : I had a ups driver in the office who asked for 300 EUR ==> CASH today!  (no invoice, no prewarning)
5) I had to send this guy away to come back on monday, when I would have enough cash in my hands (also cost for ups to drive here twice).

I have raised this experience with PN as a case, but I just got a friendly email, saying, that I would have to sort this myself. This is ok. But the communication with UPS was unfriendly (they told me - either accept the fees, or we send the product back to the US). The problem would not have been occuring if PN would have shipped it with US-Mail then it would go with DHL. And with DHL I can choose to buy the import service from them or to do it myself. Yes UPS is maybe 2-3 days quicker - but what does the speed help if you lose it for paperwork and 2 handover approaches? And that is the frustrating news. PN should offer the customer to choose the mailing company to avoid issues like that for their customers, rather than force us to import products via UPS.

So, if you buy PN to be shipped to the EU :

- prepare your paperwork as UPS will ask for it. And be aware that next to the taxes they will ask 100-150 EUR for the import-work! And keep money in your office / your home. Someone will only give the package to you if you have cash!

I hope PN is worth it and that the customer service will be better on the product itself, rather than on their support on the shipment / willingness to make it easier for their customers ....




By paulg625 - 7 Years Ago
That's weird it came from US. I'm in US and mine came out of Hong Kong ( was over a year back) and it was shipped DHL  and we also have to pay import fees. 
By kungphu - 7 Years Ago
I think they either moved offices or set up a distribution center in Florida. My original suit last year came from Hong Kong but I had to swap out all of my Nuerons this last year in June. Those came from the US. They flip flopped at some point.
By Lamias - 7 Years Ago
Thanks for the information, I'll have to keep that in mind.

Now that you got your PN suit and played with it, do you think it was worth the money and the trouble?
By paulg625 - 7 Years Ago
I haven't used mine a lot yet. But for me yes. You have to keep in mind it's not going to give you 100% complete animation. But it will give you great starting point and If you understand animation I think it will give great results. Now It doesn't like really spastic quick movements sometimes and looses calibration. But I have also seen others get pretty impressive results with action moves with it. 

But as I said I am glad I got it because I can quickly block out a motion and the tweak it to what I want. this is better than using the same conversation move over and over and over again. 
By animagic - 7 Years Ago
It seems that UPS takes COD (cash-on-delivery) a bit too literally in Europe. I'm sorry about your problems. One would think that shipping from the US would be easier than shipping from Hong Kong. I'm also sorry to hear that PN doesn't want to take at least some responsibility.