Walko workbench drawing anyone?

[Frank Pellow]

I sell to Canada all the time 48" x 48" 100 lb boxes and I never had a complaint from anyone in Canada about the shipping with UPS.
I also sell to Norway, Spain, Germany and many other countries and never had anyone complain about excessive charges they were not prepared to pay in the first place. It is NOT UPS and Fed Ex, but the country that imposes these fees as a VAT. I use Fed Ex and UPS everyday it is integral to my business and never had an out of country client even blink. I am sorry you have had issues that is not the norm in my everyday experience.

I have no idea what gouging you are referring too.

This is FREE, all taxes shipping and whatever should be paid by the winner with a smile. I would gladly pay 200.00 US and would feel way ahead of the game for the Walko.

Thanks Henrik !!

You now what Frank I may be an A-hole but you do not want to use paypal and now you do not want to use UPS or Fed Ex? Can you make it any harder to get this free item? I mean come on this item is free after all.

You are wrong about Fed Ex and UPS Nick!  It is UPS and Fed Ex charging adminitrative fees that I am talking about.  I expect to pay the approriate Federal and Provincial sales taxes, but they chage much more than this.  There are lots of shippers who do not exploit their customers like this -for instance the United States Postal Service and the Canadain Postal Service.

As to my refusal to use Paypal, this should cause no difficulties, because I am quite prepared to use the coventional and safe methods of international payment such as a money order or a cheque. 

 

[nickao]

I do not use paypal anymore for my business so I know where you are coming from on that.

As far as UPS and Fed Ex I have no issue and never had a client have an issue. I mean in the entire scheme of things it is amazing and miracle for a 100.00 I can get an inlay to Norway in 3 days. I think sometimes we get used to today's conveniences, 20 years ago that would have takes 2 weeks or more to get there. I never notices any charges that were not presented when I pay up front so I do not consider it gouging.

Ah the US postal SUCKS. They will not take my size packages and to use their service to move the big packages cost more even with all the fees you speak of for UPS and Fed Ex, sometimes as much as 50% more. So I really do not care how the cost is broken up, for me and my packages UPS and Fed Ex are cheaper than the US postal service.

I will see what the difference in price from Henrik using all three services to my address for a base comparison. I just need his ship from address.

Frank nothing personal. I felt you were hitting the gift horse in the mouth by declining certain shipping and payment suggestions before anything was decided. I mean its free and I would take that Walko any way it is simplest for Henrik to make it happen. 

 

[sw1211]

I would help pay the shipping(Kick in 25.00 or 50.00) if it went to Tinker or I could put up a listing on my web site for 5.00 or 10.00 each for a drawing.

After a week the winner can be drawn and I would pay for the shipping(and take care if it through my shipping business account) to the winner and then give Matthew the surplus for the forum. Then the winner need not even know any of the shipping costs involved.

My site uses Google for processing not paypal and any credit/debit card can be used.

Just a thought.

This sounds like a good and viable solution, thanks for offering to do this.  This should drive up FOG membership, at least temporarily when word of this give away gets out. 

 

[pingvinlakrits]

Nick: you are a champ! 

If this is an agreeable solution (which I think it is, for sure) I think we should get on with the process and do this. I will check for suitable packaging material at my local hardware store where I will be filling in for a guy on Saturday.

Frank: I hear you on the customs / duties etc. I have yet to have a problem with sending stuff to the US myself, actually it has been the opposite back in the days when I was trading with cameras - since we don't apply VAT in Sweden on second hand gear (unless for professional use) I ended up not having to pay duties except a nominal fee for clearing the item. On NEW digital gear there was an exemption made so VAT was only 2% (if you knew how to claim it, i.e. fill in the right VAT number for the form) where as everything else would be up to 25% (our VAT, I know, it IS high). This came straight from the horses mouth, the Customs office, at the time.

This could be industrial/technical gear and I will take care of my end and look it up, it's just an accessory though so I can't see why we can't make it without getting bled dry.

Since it is "used" I could downplay the value for it, if needs be, that is. I would not declare it at full value anyway since it is de facto a used item and the insurance value will have to be adjusted accordingly. I know there are some factors to overcome in order to make it feasible but hey, where there's a will there's a way - right?

Again, Nick, super!

 

[pingvinlakrits]

UPDATE:

Nickao: Sent you my full contact info.

New thread for signing up for the draw:
Paying to Nick and signing up through a new thread would be the easiest, Nick could provide a link to the site and it would be in everyones own interest to make the payment upon signing up. The admission would be ten dollars. I might think of a second and third prize which would be in excess of ten dollars that I would personally ship out. This would be something small, but useful.

We could set it up as a two-three week sign up period and a week after closing it we could tick off the list of people and payments, confirming the number of people registered and participating. By then we would have a date for the actual draw and shipping would follow as fast as we could arrange it. We are looking at a time frame of one month from today until the Walko is being shipped if all goes to plan - plenty of time to spread the word and maybe post in the Announcements part of the forum. (There is one, right?)

It would be fun if the Dominator could be reused and the draw presented at Youtube or similar.

I would say that the surplus from the shipping costs for Nick would go to a donation to the forum, handled by Nick.

I have sent a PM to Matthew Schenker about the intentions of the draw and the basics, hope to hear from him on this.

Stay tuned, we will start working on the details!
Henrik 

 

[Tinker]

Letting Nick handle it is fine with me.  Why not make the 5th choice showing Nickao as the fundraiser person.  He seems to have a much better handle on the logistics that i could figure out in six months.  I'm just now getting into my very busy season and would not have time for proper devotion to the bookkeeping and the logistics study involved.

I do appreciate your trust.
Tinker

 

[nickao]

Pretty much google collects all the info so it is no problem on that end. And after the winners shipping is paid I can paypal Mathew any remaining funds.

I would like to have the item sent directly to the winner, no need to pay shipping to me and then again somewhere else.

I am checking with Google now to make sure I am not breaking some kind of rule becasue I am actually not selling anything. I am unsure if they have some rule excluding these types of things.

I would put up the listing as Walko payment or something like that. At 10.00 each I think 20 entries would probably cover the shipping, insurance and then some. I would  send the UPS receipt to Henrik for transparency I do not want any money.  There is a  fee I pay for every transaction so every 10.00 I lose like .50 or something like that so 20 people is about  190.00 for shipping.

If we get a bunch more entries any leftover money can go to Matthew or whatever you guys want to do with it. We can even use it to buy another tool for another drawing or contest too.

Really I would be willing to contribute 5.00 or 10.00 a month to go to a fund for prizes etc. on a regular basis. 5.00 from one of us can get somebody a very nice Festool every month. Just a thought.

 

[sw1211]

May be a stupid question, are multiple entries allowed?

 

[nickao]

That is up to Henrik or whoever decides on the final rules.

It seems Dominator lottery is the preferred method so more than one entry works for that system.

 

[pingvinlakrits]

Steve-CO: that is actually a pretty good question. 

I don't know really... ???

From the get-go the sole purpose was giving away the Walko with the only criteria being a Forum member. I think I will make it forum member registered at the latest at the start of this thread so that it will benefit the existing users, which I had in mind since you are the guys I have learnt from and come to appreciate.

For an admission based lottery I think, yes, you could improve your chances by buying x amount of dickets (domino tickets) but I am not sure what you - the participants - think of this. For me, enough people to get the Walko moving across the ocean is enough so if 20-30 people register with one ticket each I think we have a nice little Lottery draw. The goal is to break even on the shipping with the surplus (if any) going to the forum. This is however not a fundraiser for the forum so I think I would stick with one entry per person and equal chance for every one.

And if 40-50 people want to enter we have a nice little surplus for the Forum that could go into another tool project or such.

As for the transparency I am for it, but I feel no need to scrutinize every penny as it will be quite clear: if 24 people enter we have $240 and if shipping is $180 then the math is easy. Any outlay for Nick should be deductible as well and surplus to the Forum.

I don't think there are that many kinks to work out:

We have the prize
We have some people who would like to win it with $10 being all you need to lose out on
The surplus, if any, goes back into the forum
We have way of shipping, cost to be assessed but not exceedingly high and covered by the admission when entering the draw
Nick organizes, I haul the table from the basement and pack it up nicely (no gift wrap though )

Let's get it on!

Does it make sense to you guys?

 

[nickao]

Sounds right to me.

I am waiting for my google rep to email me to make sure this payment idea works within their rules. I will post as soon as I find out.

I am sure I will know by tomorrow.

Nick

 

[Mettes]

Let's keep things easy and simple,  send it to Belgium, this way the shipping is low, no VAT and I can send the money true our banking system.

I'll offer myself as a volunteer to send it to...

Henrik,

It's a great offering, very kind, to bad you can't put the Walco to good use. 

Maybe there has to be one extra condition for the winner,  he or she needs to make an in depth review of the Walco?

I'm sure willing to enter the contest to keep it here in Europe, the Americans already have enough toys to play with, toys which we can't get our hands on.
Not to mention the much cheaper (power)tools, they can buy! 

Thanks Henrik, thanks for a great and generous initiative!!!

Cheers, Hans

 

[butzla]

Nick,  Good of you to volunteer to collect the money.  I didn't know Google did something similar to Paypal until now.  Question,  if the buyer uses a credit card for payment,  will be be charged a higher interest rate like they do for a "cash advance"?  I know I got stuck this way using a cc thru Paypal.  I quickly made the switch to a debit card.  Just curious.

 

[sw1211]

Henrik,

Sounds very reasonable.  I could have 49 out of 50 entries and with my luck I'd still lose. 

 

[nickao]

Nick,  Good of you to volunteer to collect the money.  I didn't know Google did something similar to Paypal until now.  Question,  if the buyer uses a credit card for payment,  will be be charged a higher interest rate like they do for a "cash advance"?  I know I got stuck this way using a cc thru Paypal.  I quickly made the switch to a debit card.  Just curious.

I have no clue at all. I actually never purchased though google(until a festool purchase). Google checkout is quite popular and acetoolonline.com uses it and many regular stores use it now too.

I never had a complaint on it yet and unlike paypal they do not go haphazardly taking money out of people bank account and do not hold the money for months like paypal can.

The only drawback I see that I never realized until today is that to use the google checkout you need to sign up for a google account(its not like paypal where you have to give bank info or anything like that). I have had google so long I was a member and did not even know it until I went to get a Festool from  ACE awhile back.  I just put in my email and I was already signed up. I guess if anyone has google mail, Gmail or anything like that they are already in the Google system.

If people do not want to use it I guess they can mail payment to the address at the link below, though using google makes it awfully simple for me to track everything.

I was thinking a page like this would work:

Walko Bench

Click the buy now and test it when you get a chance please.

Nick

 

[Peterm]

@Nikao.

Yep, that works OK. Not sure if it's up and running yet so I didn't complete the transaction, but happy to do so if it helps the test process??

Let me know, OK?

Cheers, Pete

 

[Frank Pellow]

Nick,  Good of you to volunteer to collect the money.  I didn't know Google did something similar to Paypal until now.  Question,  if the buyer uses a credit card for payment,  will be be charged a higher interest rate like they do for a "cash advance"?  I know I got stuck this way using a cc thru Paypal.  I quickly made the switch to a debit card.  Just curious.

...
If people do not want to use it I guess they can mail payment to the address at the link below, though using google makes it awfully simple for me to track everything.
...

Nick

I don't want to use it.  Who should poeple make their cheques or money orders out to?

 

[sw1211]

Nick,

I submitted an entry/payment. 

C'mom Frank get in the 21st century.  There's more risk sticking a check in the mail that someone can steal and then they have your account number and once they "wash" the check they now have a blank check.  Just giving you a hard time, gotta do whatever you're comfortable with.

 

[Tinker]

"I don't want to use it.  Who should poeple make their cheques or money orders out to?"

I'm with Frank on this one. I guess he and I are just a couple of Neanderthals
Happy to join in tho >>> if check or money order would suffice.

Tinker

 

[robtonya]

Nick, I too submitted a payment. Let me know if anything changes. Also thanks to the both of you.