(06-14-2023, 07:15 PM)KNERD Wrote: While China is technically a "developed" country now, it still gets developing nation status with the International Postal Union which means small & light weight packages can be sent for next to nothing.
Yet, we seem to pay an exorbitant amount of shipping cost for shipping items from the Pine64.com web site compared to what ePacket cost.
I have even asked some makers online saying/showing they are purchasing some relevant items and I ask, "Why no 'x' from Pine64."
Answer: "shipping!"
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First things first, we're the community here, while the Pine Store is its own entity with its own website, so when asking the community you get community answers and guesses. To add my community answer:
The Pine Store itself is not really comparable to regular commercial sellers on for example Aliexpress. One reason for that is their location, another reason is how the parcels have to be collected by the courier drivers from the shipping location compared to dropping stuff at the postal office. A third reason is that Pine Store is using what they tested as working. I'm pretty sure they tested China EMS in the past and it likely didn't turn out to be a great solution. To certain locations it is actually the worst solution, with a high amount of parcels bouncing at the customs causing the Store issues and it causes very high fees in certain countries regarding the import and taxation process. Also mind the differences regarding Pine Store and commercial entities in handling lost packages, user inquires due to long shipping times and what resources it would cost.
It's a common theme for people to ask "Why doesn't the store do that" for various topics, typically regarding software, support, payment and shipping. Don't forget that most devices are sold at production cost or at loss. Sure, they could offer software, support and all kind of payment and shipping options but they actually work the way they work because they are not like the commercial counter-parts.
On a side note, the subvention of China mail with the Universal Postal Union Agreement was terminated a few years ago. A reassessment happened 2018, the US left it 2019 and other countries could adopt the prices since 2020, which for example Germany did.
