UK Customers can't be sent games by Atariage anymore / European maybe next

[+x=usr(1536)]

7 hours ago, juansolo said:

What should we put in for the postal code? It won't allow us to use the a UK one.

Try D01 F5P2.  That's the one for the GPO on O'Connell Street in Dublin so should be valid (and likely to stay that way).

 

 

If it doesn't accept that, the irony of the form asking for a postcode and not taking the one for the Post Office will not be lost on me.

[juansolo]

Still doesn't play ball using PayPal to pay annoyingly. Now at the details page and it's stuck because there was an error and I'm unable to select shipping method. I'm assuming it pulls my details from PayPal and the shop software is saying no again. Can't move on from this.

 

EDIT - I take it back, go back to details and it had my country set as Afghanistan! Swtiched it to Ireland and it looks like we're rocking again.

 

EDIT2 - Order placed, woohoo!

Edited July 18, 2022 by juansolo

[+x=usr(1536)]

6 hours ago, juansolo said:

Still doesn't play ball using PayPal to pay annoyingly. Now at the details page and it's stuck because there was an error and I'm unable to select shipping method. I'm assuming it pulls my details from PayPal and the shop software is saying no again. Can't move on from this.

 

EDIT - I take it back, go back to details and it had my country set as Afghanistan! Swtiched it to Ireland and it looks like we're rocking again.

 

EDIT2 - Order placed, woohoo!

Excellent!  Just out of curiosity, were you able to use the GPO postcode, or was it not necessary?

[Albert]

Good news!  My VAT registration has been approved.  Once I get the details, I can update the AtariAge Store to accept orders from the UK again.

 

 

 ..Al

[juansolo]

1 hour ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Excellent!  Just out of curiosity, were you able to use the GPO postcode, or was it not necessary?

Used it for the estimated shipping field where it worked. Once I went through PayPal and continued with the order in the store I don't think it was needed, I just had to go back to the details panel and change my country to Ireland. My real post code was there and was ok. I just put my full address in the notes at the end.

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

My copy of Gravitic Mines arrived today safe and sound so I’ll definitely purchase via the Ebay store again until the AtariAge store is ready to start shipping to the UK again. 

[juansolo]

@Atari_JaguarVCS did you get hit by duty on arrival? I've found it to be hit and miss since brexit when importing stuff with small stuff sometimes getting through.

Edited August 1, 2022 by juansolo

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

48 minutes ago, juansolo said:

@Atari_JaguarVCS did you get hit by duty on arrival? I've found it to be hit and miss since brexit when importing stuff with small stuff sometimes getting through.

Nope nothing! Maybe I got lucky? I’ll be picking up some more games soon from the Ebay store since it’s worked out well for me so far so I’ll see how it goes next time. I’m surprised how quickly the game arrived too, it wasn’t supposed to arrive for another few weeks. 

[juansolo]

9 minutes ago, Atari_JaguarVCS said:

Nope nothing! Maybe I got lucky? I’ll be picking up some more games soon from the Ebay store since it’s worked out well for me so far so I’ll see how it goes next time. I’m surprised how quickly the game arrived too, it wasn’t supposed to arrive for another few weeks. 

If it was delivered by the post office, then it got through. Nice!

 

Smaller stuff seems to these days, bigger stuff always seems to get stopped though. I'm trying this on myself. Got something coming from the US (not just my AA order) and another from Germany. Will be interesting to see if I'm charged, both are small.

Edited August 1, 2022 by juansolo

[BlueIn2Red]

Lucky you. I ordered direct, £300 worth plus £50 (!) for “express shipping”, and I’ve heard nothing for more than two weeks, with two PMs going unanswered. Very poor service and I won’t be using AtariAge again, which is frustrating as somehow they seem to have got a monopoly on many games.

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

5 minutes ago, BlueIn2Red said:

Lucky you. I ordered direct, £300 worth plus £50 (!) for “express shipping”, and I’ve heard nothing for more than two weeks, with two PMs going unanswered. Very poor service and I won’t be using AtariAge again, which is frustrating as somehow they seem to have got a monopoly on many games.

That doesn’t sound to good! Hopefully you get it resolved soon and get your items. 

[juansolo]

AA orders tend to take a while... Just go for regular shipping (not much less looking at my order that was $47.55). Gotta appreciate that it's essentially a one man operation, and he also runs this place and has PRGE to prepare for. I don't think it's unreasonable that things might take a little while. Admittedly we've been waiting longer than everyone else because of the block on UK orders, but we've waited this long already. I know I'm making excuses, but it's really the only option we have right now for a lot of these games.

[Albert]

27 minutes ago, BlueIn2Red said:

Lucky you. I ordered direct, £300 worth plus £50 (!) for “express shipping”, and I’ve heard nothing for more than two weeks, with two PMs going unanswered. Very poor service and I won’t be using AtariAge again, which is frustrating as somehow they seem to have got a monopoly on many games.

I apologize, I am very busy right now catching up on a large batch of orders.  I will refund the difference between the express shipping and regular shipping.  All games are built by hand to order, so it is time consuming.  I will be getting all outstanding orders shipped this week. 

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

1 hour ago, juansolo said:

@Atari_JaguarVCS did you get hit by duty on arrival? I've found it to be hit and miss since brexit when importing stuff with small stuff sometimes getting through.

When buying games on eBay, UK customers will be paying for the VAT at the time of purchase (this is true on Etsy as well).  This is reflected on the shipping label, and I believe packages should just sail through customs without any issues or additional administrative fees.  This is how it should be in the AtariAge Store as well once I have the VAT information (hopefully soon, it's been a few weeks now since the VAT application was approved).

 

 ..Al

[+cubanismo]

46 minutes ago, Albert said:

(hopefully soon, it's been a few weeks now since the VAT application was approved).

IIRC, it takes forever to get the letter with the info from them after the approval too. All my physical correspondence from them came via Malta post, which seemed to take a ridiculously long time. I recently got a notice that I was late filing a return. I'd closed my account last year and filed my last return a bit late in January because I forgot about it. I was confused, thinking I was done with that mess, then I looked at the date. The notice had been sent in early January and arrived in July!

[Albert]

1 minute ago, cubanismo said:

IIRC, it takes forever to get the letter with the info from them after the approval too. All my physical correspondence from them came via Malta post, which seemed to take a ridiculously long time. I recently got a notice that I was late filing a return. I'd closed my account last year and filed my last return a bit late in January because I forgot about it. I was confused, thinking I was done with that mess, then I looked at the date. The notice had been sent in early January and arrived in July!

I haven't had any physical correspondence with them, it's all been done by email so far.  A bit disappointing if they are going to send the VAT registration information via physical mail given everything else was done electronically.  That's discouraging to hear that a letter they sent you in January didn't arrive until July!  Here's hoping they send the VAT certificate to me electronically (either via email or through the HMRC website). 

 

 ..Al

[Albert]

8 hours ago, BlueIn2Red said:

Lucky you. I ordered direct, £300 worth plus £50 (!) for “express shipping”, and I’ve heard nothing for more than two weeks, with two PMs going unanswered. Very poor service and I won’t be using AtariAge again, which is frustrating as somehow they seem to have got a monopoly on many games.

I shipped your order today, hopefully it arrives quickly and you can enjoy the games. 

 

Just wanted to follow up on the shipping, you did not pay for Express Shipping, it was First Class International, which is the slowest and least expensive service USPS offers.  I know "first class" is a bit of a misnomer, the fastest rate is "Priority Mail Express" (used to just be called "Express Mail"), which is considerably more expensive (as is regular "Priority Mail", the second fastest rate).  The items you ordered (three Jaguar games and a Jaguar Pro Controller) are fairly heavy, and once you get over two pounds, the rates climb quite a bit for international destinations.  Yeah, it does suck that the USPS international rates have skyrocketed in the past decade, and I have no doubt that's cut down on international sales.  I look forward to being able to offer substantially discounted rates as soon as I move the store over to new software.  I'm working now on migrating the forum to a new hosting service and getting the software upgraded to the latest version.  Once that's done (within a week or two I hope, just waiting for the migration to be scheduled), I can then focus more time on the store itself.  Also hoping I get that UK VAT certificate soon so those in the UK can once again easily order from the store.

 

Also, your order was placed on July 16th, which is just over two weeks ago.  There is a notice when checking out that orders take 1-2 weeks to ship, as games are hand-built as orders come in, and I tend to do so in batches to make everything more manageable.  I can get behind on orders, though, depending on the volume of orders coming in and whatever else I might have going on at the time.  There are two things that will help me improve upon this. First, I will soon be using new, flash-based Jaguar boards instead of legacy EPROM boards, which means I will be able to build a whole ton of "blank" Jaguar carts with these boards, program them on demand, test, label and ship.  And I will be paying to have these boards manufactured, meaning I won't have to solder them.  This will immensely lessen the time required to ship Jaguar games. 

 

Second, I have 2,000 brand new Atari 2600 shells on the way, and I should have those in a few weeks.  As 2600 games make up over half of what I sell, having the new 2600 shells will save me a HUGE amount of time, as I am still currently recycling old, common 2600 games for new 2600 homebrews.  Which is a mind-numbingly tedious and slow process.  Also, I am planning on using more flash-based boards for 2600 games once I get a metric ton of our Aria boards manufactured, and this, too, will save be an enormous time saver, as the majority of 2600 games I still solder by hand (excepting those games that use the Melody boards, and those that I presently use the Aria boards for [any games that use extra RAM and/or oddball bankswitch schemes]).

 

Thank you for listening,

 

 ..Al

[+CyranoJ]

Anyone complaining that a one-man, built to order service doesn't work like Amazon needs to re-evaluate their expectations

(And also read the disclaimers about shipping times)

 

As for the monopoly - AtariAge production values are second to none.  As a developer that trust placed in your game is invaluable. 

 

 

[BlueIn2Red]

Thanks for your input, but with respect, you don’t know the full story. I certainly don’t want this to become a public slanging match, so we’ll leave it at that (to be honest I started it by mistakenly posting my first reply here rather than in a private message thread with a few other UK members, which is where I thought I was!).

[+cubanismo]

12 hours ago, Albert said:

Here's hoping they send the VAT certificate to me electronically (either via email or through the HMRC website). 

Yeah, I don't recall how, but I believe my VAT number showed up somewhere electronic much faster than the actual letter arrived. I think I just had to log in to hmrc.gov.uk every few days and check for new functionality being available, as there was no actual notice things had gone through. Good luck!

[Albert]

17 minutes ago, cubanismo said:

Yeah, I don't recall how, but I believe my VAT number showed up somewhere electronic much faster than the actual letter arrived. I think I just had to log in to hmrc.gov.uk every few days and check for new functionality being available, as there was no actual notice things had gone through. Good luck!

That's exactly what I've been doing.  Thanks for stating that's what you did, gives me incentive to keep doing that.

 

 ..Al

[TheGameCollector]

Yet somehow I was able to order items from the Zebrahead merch store which is based in the UK but didn't get any extra charges even though I'm in the USA...

[+x=usr(1536)]

8 hours ago, TheGameCollector said:

Yet somehow I was able to order items from the Zebrahead merch store which is based in the UK but didn't get any extra charges even though I'm in the USA...

UK prices are typically inclusive of VAT unless otherwise mentioned - or are you referring to customs charges?

[juansolo]

US import limits are very reasonable. You rarely trigger duty unless you're spending lots. UK import limits and charges are very unreasonable... Also US export postage costs went a bit mental a while back.

[juansolo]

Getting slightly concerned that I haven't had any shipping confirmation on my order as the last I heard the outstanding orders would be going out last weekend...