Just an FYI to everyone opting in:
1) I am based in Pretoria, close to the Nelmapius off-ramp of the R21, so keep this in mind when planning whether you want to collect, have someone collect on your behalf or have it couriered at an additional R99. If you see people from the same area as yourself, maybe reach out and see if one person can collect from me and everyone there collects from him. That way you can avoid that 5 guys living 8km apart all need to drive 50km to collect the parcels. Same goes for the people in other provinces, if there is an option to Postnet to one person and others can collect from there etc etc. Something to keep in mind as well (especially if your orders will be for cheaper items and accessories), is that normal PostNL shipping is $8.99 and DHL is around $50 now. So if you have more than 5 people in a province, it will make more sense to do a separate GB for that area. I am more than willing to assist with advice and how we have done a Fasttech GB in the past, I just think it makes more sense logistically.
In terms of the cost, PayPal always has a slightly worse exchange rate than what the daily spot rate is (usually an extra R0.50 to R1.00 to the $), so factor that into your planning or budgeting. Duties are usually not charged, or are very low if the parcel is under $100, but DHL is quite wary of any Chinese parcels in terms of value. Fasttech usually rates every parcel value (when shipping with PostNL) as $20, but with DHL they usually put the full value on, as DHL often asks for the invoice if the value looks suspect. In a GB it will be impossible to pass the value off as under $100, so be prepared for at least 15% of your order value in additional fees. I would rather be up front about this, so that you know exactly what to expect when I tell you what the owed amount is.
In the past, I tried to work out what the shipping cost per person is in relation to their proportionate value of the total order. I got hectic to adjust and re-adjust every time someone added, swapped or removed an item in the order. So this time, seeing as PostNL shipping would be $8.99 per person anyway, I want to just make it simple and split the shipping equally. If for some reason the shipping cost turns out to be significantly higher that the $50 range, we can have another discussion at the time. We can perhaps put an initial threshold in place that we will approach it as an equal split, as long as the shipping works out to no more than $8.99 per person.
For those who have purchased enough from Fasttech in the past and have enough rebate points available to redeem a gift certificate, you are welcome to redeem that on your account and send me the certificate code as we can apply more than once certificate to an order. As the gift certificates are all in USD already, I will deduct the certificate value from your owed amount before working out what your owed amount in Rands is.
Lastly, please keep in mind that some of the items only ship in a few business days, so being part of a GB may mean waiting for a few days due to someone else's items. That being said, please keep in mind that we are all in this as a group, so please don't add an item if the ETA is something wild like 21 business days to re-stock.
If I missed anything, or you have any other questions, feel free to give me a shout. Please post all questions here in the thread as I want every part of this GB to be open for all participants to see. When the time comes, I will also post all order sheets, invoices, tracking updates etc here in the thread.
1) I am based in Pretoria, close to the Nelmapius off-ramp of the R21, so keep this in mind when planning whether you want to collect, have someone collect on your behalf or have it couriered at an additional R99. If you see people from the same area as yourself, maybe reach out and see if one person can collect from me and everyone there collects from him. That way you can avoid that 5 guys living 8km apart all need to drive 50km to collect the parcels. Same goes for the people in other provinces, if there is an option to Postnet to one person and others can collect from there etc etc. Something to keep in mind as well (especially if your orders will be for cheaper items and accessories), is that normal PostNL shipping is $8.99 and DHL is around $50 now. So if you have more than 5 people in a province, it will make more sense to do a separate GB for that area. I am more than willing to assist with advice and how we have done a Fasttech GB in the past, I just think it makes more sense logistically.
In terms of the cost, PayPal always has a slightly worse exchange rate than what the daily spot rate is (usually an extra R0.50 to R1.00 to the $), so factor that into your planning or budgeting. Duties are usually not charged, or are very low if the parcel is under $100, but DHL is quite wary of any Chinese parcels in terms of value. Fasttech usually rates every parcel value (when shipping with PostNL) as $20, but with DHL they usually put the full value on, as DHL often asks for the invoice if the value looks suspect. In a GB it will be impossible to pass the value off as under $100, so be prepared for at least 15% of your order value in additional fees. I would rather be up front about this, so that you know exactly what to expect when I tell you what the owed amount is.
In the past, I tried to work out what the shipping cost per person is in relation to their proportionate value of the total order. I got hectic to adjust and re-adjust every time someone added, swapped or removed an item in the order. So this time, seeing as PostNL shipping would be $8.99 per person anyway, I want to just make it simple and split the shipping equally. If for some reason the shipping cost turns out to be significantly higher that the $50 range, we can have another discussion at the time. We can perhaps put an initial threshold in place that we will approach it as an equal split, as long as the shipping works out to no more than $8.99 per person.
For those who have purchased enough from Fasttech in the past and have enough rebate points available to redeem a gift certificate, you are welcome to redeem that on your account and send me the certificate code as we can apply more than once certificate to an order. As the gift certificates are all in USD already, I will deduct the certificate value from your owed amount before working out what your owed amount in Rands is.
Lastly, please keep in mind that some of the items only ship in a few business days, so being part of a GB may mean waiting for a few days due to someone else's items. That being said, please keep in mind that we are all in this as a group, so please don't add an item if the ETA is something wild like 21 business days to re-stock.
If I missed anything, or you have any other questions, feel free to give me a shout. Please post all questions here in the thread as I want every part of this GB to be open for all participants to see. When the time comes, I will also post all order sheets, invoices, tracking updates etc here in the thread.
