International Loaners - A Dialogue

Do you think international loaners are a good idea or not?

 

I would be in favor of sending loaners to Australia / New Zealand after America. There would need to be a cost sharing set up for the international shipping which would probably be around $300 per item round trip. What I envision is loaners being sent to a loaner captain in Sydney or Melbourne, who then coordinates shipping within Australia to loaner participants. After that, they would on-ship to Auckland, New Zealand where a New Zealand loaner captain would coordinate shipping within New Zealand, followed by shipping back to the West Coast.

The big question really is about demand. Are there enough Australian / Kiwi SBAF members to warrant sending the items to this part of the world. I would say yes, and I can imagine there would be enough demand to make international shipping fees a non issue. The loaner captain could be responsible for collecting shipping cost share payments from loanees using the local banking system. IE, if I was the loaner captain in New Zealand, I would require everyone to send me 10 or 15 NZD or whatever the cost share of the international shipping fee is, because they get on the loaner list. Then I would be responsible for shipping it back to the USA after the local tour finishes.

 

What are dimensions of a headphone box?

 

As someone who lives in Europe I'd love to see a loaner program for the Elear or Utopia for instance. The main problem I see is with customs.. they usually don't care that you're just "loaning" the headphone to someone. If it goes across the border they want to get paid.

I think the easiest is probably just to have a separate loaner program for Europe for instance, that could work. Australia? Would love to help you out but you're kind of a far way away down there. Not sure if that could work.

 

Would loaners run into any import/export fees? That sounds like it might happen, and would be expensive...

 

Very likely. Sometimes you can get lucky and get around it if you're shipping a "demo" product or something like that. And some countries sometimes you can get your import taxes back on export. But it's just not worth the risk or hassle. Chances are one day the customs office is going to bite down, and then they're going to bite down hard and not let go. Keep it inside the US or inside Europe is my advice.

 

I agree. To reliably get around import tax you would have to declare a lower value, which would preclude insurance for higher value items. Not good.

Regional loaner groups where people can buy in and vote on what gets purchased might work. You need numbers for something like that to really take flight though...

 

Can the Aus/NZ folks connect with Paul/brooko the HF moderator? Seems strength in numbers might help

 

While this is tempting, customs hassles make loaners a non-starter in India. The hassle I faced trying to send Bill-p my LCD 2.2 was a piece of work. Fedex (of all people) refused to ship anything that had a magnet. I got around this by saying that there were no magnets but fazors or reflection guides in them. Mine is a non-fazor 2.2 .

 

Be aware that time in customs is in addition to the shipping time. That can be significant.

 

Shooting myself in the foot somewhat here, but I have to be honest and vote "not at the moment". I'd love to get the chance to participate in a loaner scheme, but the costs (insurance essential) and risks are too high imho for international shipping. Having dealt with UK Customs when importing gear for HF meets, it can be a royal pain in the arse. You either have to pay a load of duty up front and claim it back when you ship the unit back overseas, or persuade Customs that it's a loaner unit and have it classified as such (this wasn't as easy to do as I'd hoped last time). Also, it gets more complicated if the person sending the unit back overseas isn't the same person who received it when it first arrived in the country.

Further down the road if SBAF has the funds and there are sufficiently trustworthy people (as far as the SBAF admins are concerned) in other countries then perhaps we could talk about having EU / AU specific demo units that are purchased and do the rounds locally. These could then be shipped onwards to SBAF HQ to join the main gear collection there when the local loaner program was complete.

 

Singaporean customs are the nicest bunch, great to work with! Maybe a stop-over on the way to ANZ?

 

I'd say - open a separate European theatre of loanerifications, if it's possible. Inside EU shipping should be no harder or riskier than within US.

It really depends how many EU sbafers are there with significant street cred.

 

You're my hero. Please tell me it's the Utopia or Elear! If so please sign me up.

I myself have the Edition-X. I might be able to send that one around if people are interested.

 

As I recall, I've sometimes shipped stuff under the guise of "Repairs and product evaluation" that can sometimes get through. This is a vague remembrance...just throwing it out there.

 

No, no. Wasn't asking you to send your personal Utopia around. Was hoping you were talking with Focal, but maybe not. Oh well.