Hi,
I recently bought a Jolla phone here in the US. I live here and I’ve just placed my order. I know Jolla doesn’t ship to the US, so I wanted to ask how I could change my address (I used my main address in the US) to something or someone who can ship the phone overseas.
I’ve contacted customer support about this, but they’re also taking a bit to respond.
I know it’s annoying but I think there’s nothing more to do for now. Jolla will necessarily contact you about your shipping address in several months when they’re ready to ship. You’re probably not alone in the situation, so maybe they’ll want to process all of those requests on a given day so they don’t lose more time than needed. So I think it will be viewed as a low priority request.
When asking on the internet, how to update shipping address after purchase with shopify, answers say it’s possible on the admin panel, so not for you. See for example this forum thread: Updating Shipping & Billing Address After Order Has Been Placed and Paid
use a parcel forwarding service
These are just examples. If I click on the first entry I see the process is quite fast forward (it should work with goods bought in any EU country despite they say Germany, just ask them).
When Jolla sends you an email inviting you to complete your order and provide a shipping address, they should allow more or less one month to do so .
If I were you I’d wait for that email, then register with the forwarding service of your choice - who will communicate you an European shipping address that you will provide as you complete your order.
I haven’t used any of these services (so do your research).
BTW things might get complicated afterwards with the guarantee…
And maybe US customs.
I’m betting that getting it in won’t be a problem. Betting in the literal sense, with money. The purchase price, that is. As far as what kind of import taxes I’ll face, it’s anybody’s guess what they’ll be several months down the road. At least my mailman is a bit sloppy, so maybe I’ll get off scot-free. I will follow up in this forum with whatever happens on this end.
I just set up with a forwarding service (Forward2Me) from Ohio. Shipping it to the UK as there is no VAT. Shipping cost from Jolla was €25. Cost from the UK to my house will probably be around $80-120 if I had to guess.
Kind of sucks for cost, but worth it imo. Still under retail.
How is it with the UK regarding customs though? And if you do forwarding across another customs border, how are things there? Honest question, I never considered forwarding across custom borders.
Don’t know how the situation is with sales tax in your state or the US in general. In the EU, if you don’t pay VAT, you’ll pay import sales tax to basically the same extend. Unless of course it slips through customs.
Phones and items under $800 are usually 0% import duty in the US. Worst case I might get a small processing fee, but most of the time it just clears customs with no extra charges.
Technically there’s state use tax, but it’s almost never enforced at delivery for something like this.
On the Finland to UK side, fees are baked into the warehouse business costs since they’re set up for international imports. If there are any, the customer never sees them directly.
Hi, sorry to bother you. I also live outside of Europe. As you suggested, I found a shipping company and the seller asked if I would accept this. Do you think this will cause any problems? I think you’ve experienced this yourself.
Interesting, thanks for the info. I am not sure how the tariff situation is in the UK with phones to begin with, could be that they are tariff free anyway and if they aren’t it might be only a few %.
So overall, surprisingly lenient, which is even the more interesting as there are currently tariffs thrown around as if there were no tomorrow. Not that I would mind.
To be honest, I am pretty convinced that this grey import makes for a considerably better deal than if that phone should ever be sold officially in the US (likely with some US partner). Just look at the considerable price hike for the Fairphone 6 (comparing to Murena’s /e/OS version that is also sold in Europe). For low volume phones all the red tape for entering the US market adds a lot of costs I assume. The downside of course is that warranty claims and customer support are largely out of the window and also potential lack of optimisation for the US market. But with most Jolla customers I assume that they know what they are getting and are quite proficient on the matter themselves.
PS: It is great to hopefully get some data points also in the US, on how the J2 works there.
They do have a VAT in the UK (20%), but because the phone is sold as an export I avoid that. There’s nothing extra on phones either.
The tariff situation in the US is a bit more complicated. It’s based on origin and category. Chinese origin steel, for example, would have extra tax imposed (25%) because it’s from China, no matter where it shipped from later. Chinese phones, usually nothing.
As far as the cost to Jolla for entering the US market, yeah it’s not cheap. Costs for certification and testing can hit close to $100k USD if things go sideways. Distribution and support isn’t cheap. I understand why they haven’t done it yet. But overall, yeah, probably still a better deal just going this route. Especially for the pre-order price.
In the US, AT&T is actually the best carrier for this phone, but I’ll be using it on T-Mobile. Only missing a few bands, should be alright.
I’ll deal with the other stuff as it comes up. Getting away from the major manufacturers will be worth the tradeoffs.
Sorry for the info dump lol. Hopefully this helps someone else considering importing.
Hi, I’ll also be using Forward2Me, but would it be a problem if I set it up now? My order will arrive in 6 months. Would it be okay if I paid them the requested amount now, even if they only receive the package in 6 months?
From what I’ve seen, I don’t think you pay until they have the actual package. Shouldn’t be an issue to set everything up now. The address won’t change
I don’t know exactly how the process works. I contacted them, and they pretty much explained it, but I’m thinking of having it sent to their warehouse address in Germany, and from there to an address in Georgia. This will make it easier for me to receive it, but what steps should I follow? I couldn’t find the German address on their website. Also, I only registered on their site.
Is there a tutorial guide on what to do? I apologize if I’m wasting your time, it’s just very confusing and this is my first time using this site. Also, I thought you might know about this site because your keywords came up today.
The de minimis exemption for personal imports to the US seems to be subject to change on a country by country basis, on a whim, and without any notice*. Last Summer I did end up paying the import tax on a Fairphone 5 from the UK, although it was thru eBay not direct, and since it was an eBay buy, eBay handled the bookkeeping and collected the import tax.
I’m kinda hoping the phone gets to my door when my mailman is busy or just doesn’t care and can’t be arsed to screw around waiting for me to write a check.
What would the kids say? “YOLO ill FAFO LOL” Or something like that.
*Of course, I now maintain a 100% news and social media blackout, so there might have been some notice if I’d been willing to risk my mental health.
That’s fair. Thanks for the correction. I haven’t used eBay in quite a while, so that very well could be the case, and I’ve just avoided it with private sales.
Either way, yeah, YOLO or whatever lol