For PRIVATE customers from EU Seeed Studio totally fail to give us a proper service with respect to VAT.
From mid 2021 the rules in all of EU changed so that ALL shipments, even for small amounts, must pay VAT. Other taxes require that the price is over a limit (150 Euros) which is high enough that most private sales are excempt.
There are two ways to pay VAT
The expensive is to just send the goods with a value declararion and let the customer pay VAT and a rediculous handling fee to the local postal service. In my country Denmark it is 22 Euros. So if I buy a 20 Euro module from Seeed Studio, I pay 5 Euros VAT and 22 Euros fee for a total of 47 Euros. And then you add shipping on top. It is the fee that is the major expense.
The other way is that the seller learn to use the common EU one stop shop system.
This means that they register with the EU as a non EU seller. They charge the VAT and pay the VAT to one place periodically (quaterly or monthly depending on details that are not important here). Each time the seller ships something a tracking number is recorded in some online system. And when you use this system the shipment is sent directly to the customer without any delay, without any fees. This is the way any serious business selling to EU customers should behave.
Places like Banggood, Aliexpress, JLCPCB etc have done that since July 2021.
Seeed Studio has not cared to educate thenselves with the new rules. They just continue to sell to private EU customers the old way and we end up paying way too high prices. I just paid these shit fees twice for some simple mm wave radar modules and I am pissed off at having to pay the high fees
I can understand that a business cannot handle 100s of procedures for individual countries. But the European Union has common rules. We are 27 countries with 450 million people all having same administrative rules. And along US, UK, and Canada probably also the most frequent buyers of products outside China.
I am buying 100s of items yearly from sellers that are smaller than Seeed through Aliexpress and they can handle the new EU rules. So should Seeed. Or they should find an EU reseller.