hobbyking from europe

[Guest]

Hi all looking for a bit of advise
HK has 6 cell lipos that i want and unfortunately they are not in stock in the UK warehouse and have not been for a while now in the europe warehouse they have 5 quid off on offer and wanting 6 of them its a nice saving now question is will i get hit with import tax and also i wont be using them for a few months as i dont do much flying in the winter so also would they be ok sat for a few months even if when i get them i put them on my charger just to check their internal resistance.
Thanks for your input

[hedge]

Hi all looking for a bit of advise
HK has 6 cell lipos that i want and unfortunately they are not in stock in the UK warehouse and have not been for a while now in the europe warehouse they have 5 quid off on offer and wanting 6 of them its a nice saving now question is will i get hit with import tax and also i wont be using them for a few months as i dont do much flying in the winter so also would they be ok sat for a few months even if when i get them i put them on my charger just to check their internal resistance.
Thanks for your input

No import tax from Europe until we brexit. They will be fine sitting around at "storage" charge, but do check them (if you get them) and put them into storage -that's a 50% charge.

Biggest issue is I don't think HK will ship them to you from Europe. These things are viewed by couriers as TNT and they don't like flying them anymore.

[Grumpy]

+1 on above, no import duty within the EU but if the stored energy in the batteries adds up to more than 100 watt-hours you will almost certainly have major problems with shipping. (one 6S 5000mAh battery is 111W.h. )

[Guest]

They are giving me a postal price of 11 quid in the basket

[Grumpy]

They are giving me a postal price of 11 quid in the basket

Fair enough, no reason not to place the order then. Probably it's surface shipping from the EU so rules arent as tight as air mailing.

[Guest]

Job done 6 lipos from EU for 105 quid thats me sorted for next years flying shame its so far away

[Grumpy]

Good that you got your batteries. I'm not sure whats going on at Hobbyking right now. First they screw up the web site so that it takes ages to find anything (you can no longer select a specific warehouse) and even when you do spend ages searching you find they are out of stock in both EU and UK. For instance they dont have a single 6S 5000mAh battery of any type. A year ago they had loads of them, we were almost spoilt for choice, now there are literally none. There havent been any for months so it's not a short term stock issue.

They have a limited number in the global warehouse but that's not much use as shipping of large batteries is very expensive (over £19 for a 6S 5000mAh) and HK no longer mark down the customs declaration value so you get hit for VAT and the royal mail ransom fee.

[Guest]

You can now select warehouse when your browsing products but you cannot select cell count so have to trawl though everything.
I bought 6 cell 3000 mah zippy flightmax but have not seen them in uk stock for months at least i still got a good deal though from eu warehouse

[Grumpy]

You can now select warehouse when your browsing products but you cannot select cell count so have to trawl though everything.
I bought 6 cell 3000 mah zippy flightmax but have not seen them in uk stock for months at least i still got a good deal though from eu warehouse

Yes, I discovered that. You either have to trawl through pages and pages of every battery in the chosen warehouse, or you can use the battery search tool which narrows down the battery type but not the warehouse location, you can then only tell what warehouse by opening the item. The most stupid thing is that it used to work perfectly before they 'improved' it.

[Guest]

i tried that battery tool last night but it wouldnt work for me i already had them saved in my basket and just checked every couple of days for warehouse availability

[Nick B]

I just received 2 x 4s 3300's for my old man from EU no problems.

[Grumpy]

I just received 2 x 4s 3300's for my old man from EU no problems.

That's below 100 watt hours so less of a problem than a 6S 5000mAh.

[10x]

+1 on above, no import duty within the EU but if the stored energy in the batteries adds up to more than 100 watt-hours you will almost certainly have major problems with shipping. (one 6S 5000mAh battery is 111W.h. )

I think that the 100 watt-hours applies to each battery not the total batteries. Last year i bought some Gens Ace batteries from Germany, 4 x 6s x 4500mAh and they were all posted Ok, also if you put some batteries into your cart on the website you can get cheap postage for 4500mAh but the 5000mAh are very expensive. The amount of batteries does not make any difference...

[Grumpy]

I think that the 100 watt-hours applies to each battery not the total batteries. Last year i bought some Gens Ace batteries from Germany, 4 x 6s x 4500mAh and they were all posted Ok, also if you put some batteries into your cart on the website you can get cheap postage for 4500mAh but the 5000mAh are very expensive. The amount of batteries does not make any difference...

I just tested this with the hobbyking web site. As you would expect a 6S 4500mAh did not attract 'dangerous goods' shipping rates. Based on the 100W.h. rule I'd expect that two of them would be classed as 'dangerous' but they werent.. so i got to thinking you must be right. Then i tried three of them and that did get the dangerous goods shipping rate, as I did four or five.

So I'm confused. Of course it could just be a error in the way the HK site works it out. the entire site seems to be screwed up so no reason to expect the postage calculator to work properly!

[10x]

I just tried on the Gens Ace site and 10 x 4400mAh 6s still only came up with the cheap shipping rate of 11.69 euro's......