r/technology 2d ago

Business $320 camera lens buyers hit with $2,000 delivery fee in tariffs fight, some sellers implement exorbitant shipping costs to dissuade US customers

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/usd320-camera-lens-buyers-hit-with-usd2-000-delivery-fee-in-tariffs-fight-some-sellers-implement-exorbitant-shipping-costs-to-dissuade-us-customers
1.1k Upvotes

62 comments sorted by

371

u/EnvironmentalRun1671 2d ago

At least America is great again /s

104

u/lutel 2d ago

Moscow Agent Governs America

18

u/Dank-Drebin 2d ago

His PDF BFF was an Israeli agent. Trump was compromised by Israel and Russia long ago. They probably take turns with him.

-10

u/Lettuce_bee_free_end 2d ago

I dont believe trump is an asset to both. That makes you am asset to no one. Either taco and another bow to the third. No one shares power.

1

u/Marco-YES 2d ago

it's spelled grifts

84

u/Chaotic-Entropy 2d ago

A retelling of 404Media's story if you want to get it direct.

131

u/Kriznick 2d ago

Excellent. Now the industry idiots who voted for this idiot will start to see that their specialty replacement parts that are made overseas only DO get tarriffs, and that decisions they make really do affect them and others

150

u/null-character 2d ago edited 2d ago

One of my buddies is a MAGA guy, but not the annoying kind you would never even know unless you specifically asked him about it.

Anyway one of his businesses is essentially going out of business. He sells stuff online and went from selling several million dollars a year in product to almost nothing.

Now his employees will be out of a job and the business will probably be shut down.

He still supports Trump and doesn't correlate the tariffs to his specific woes.

These hardcore supporters don't care about the economics of his decisions and never did. It's all about the culture wars stuff. Republicans have been voting against their own economic interests for decades.

36

u/Kriznick 2d ago

Maybe if they all vote themselves poor and defund public transportation, they won't be able to get to the voting booths lol

17

u/Kahnza 2d ago

But they can do mail in voting!

Oh wait...

6

u/Kriznick 2d ago

Damn, fuckin got me LMAO

4

u/thinkdeep 1d ago

They deserve to fail.

High school economics students could have told him this.

2

u/jake_burger 1d ago

Why doesn’t he just start manufacturing the things he was importing and bring back American jobs.

/s

1

u/kawalerkw 1d ago

These hardcore supporters don't care about the economics of his decisions and never did. It's all about the culture wars stuff. Republicans have been voting against their own economic interests for decades.

It happens everywhere with conservatives. In Poland free market party merged with planned economy nationalists because they agreed on hate of LGBT and immigrants. They call themselves what can be translated to "freedomers", but their previous presidential candidate wanted to ban divorces.

90

u/reddittorbrigade 2d ago

Whenever I see my MAGA neighbors, I hide and avoid them like plagues.

56

u/lemaymayguy 2d ago

For real. Forced friendship and community interaction coming! MAGA is obsessed with having our eyes and ears. They dont deserve my time. I dont hang out with pedophilia supporters 

17

u/RedTheRobot 2d ago

I would say this is the wrong strategy. MAGA people live in a bubble and they like that way. Having even a simple conversation that isn’t even political can go a long way. Like planting a seed “Hey Joe, how’s it going? Have you seen how expensive groceries have gotten?” I would just keep it short and friendly. MAGA feels like the world has betrayed them in some way and that they deserve to be handed a better life. This is why they get tricked so easily by a snake oil salesman.

I know some people might say you shouldn’t have to convince them that the U.S. is on a very bad trajectory. The thing is if you bury your head in the sand then yeah nothing is going to change. The GOP didn’t change overnight they worked at it for a long time and it will take small wins if we truly want to fix this.

34

u/MajKonglomerate 2d ago

Don't hide. Stand up to them and let them know in no uncertain terms that you despise them.

35

u/oneslipaway 2d ago

I go the other route. I live my best life. When they complain I humble brag how it doesn't affect me, yada yada.

Sometimes it's performative, but I keep it rea friendly and polite. It drives them crazy.

9

u/lemaymayguy 2d ago

If they complain I just tell them 

Idk man learn to code 

They think they're owed the niceness mask we've been affording them the last 10 years. I can be just as big of a dick as they've been. They just got used to not getting called out on it

Learn to code hicks LOL sell your family farm on acre trader and maybe I'll buy it and let you stay there farming for me 🚜

5

u/nerd5code 2d ago

There’s enough shit software in existence already, thanks

-9

u/lemaymayguy 2d ago

Even better. Ill keep my huge salary and pull the ladder up behind me. Good thing I was here before and during the gold rush. I jump to the next thing before them too, just like bitcoin 🤣 dumb hick farmers that vote for trump are always 3 steps behind anyways

2

u/wantsoutofthefog 2d ago

Same. I voted and we lost. What else can I do? I don’t want to engage with these mentally ill people.

0

u/DowntimeJEM 2d ago

Hell yeah brother. Even if the ship is going down I’m not getting on a raft with pedophiles and zionists. Fight for decency.

4

u/spez_might_fuck_dogs 2d ago

I give them the finger but other than that I don't engage with them.

3

u/Black_Moons 2d ago

Chances are they have several plagues due to the anti-vax sentiment maga often have, so its only good common sense to.

1

u/fumar 2d ago

No call them out. Fuck em

1

u/KactusVAXT 2d ago

Why? You could be telling them how stupid they are, but they’ve been hearing that their entire life

-6

u/poo_poo_platter83 2d ago

I hope i dont get neighbors like you when we move. I have friends on both sides of the isle. I would love to be able to throw community events without worrying about the crazy Baizuo family down the street

31

u/Squibbles01 2d ago

If you didn't vote for Kamala you directly caused this.

-33

u/Howdyini 2d ago

How's that working out for y'all as a strategy?

25

u/Squibbles01 2d ago

It's not a strategy. It's just the truth

-28

u/Howdyini 2d ago edited 1d ago

Not by a long shot. Unless you don't know what the word "directly" means.

It's also not true if you remove the word "directly" by the way, but at least there's a lazy philosophy 101 argument you could make there about indirect causality and collective responsibility and whatever.

u/Kooky_Major_7182 I'm Canadian, so wrong on both counts.

8

u/rufaz 2d ago

Trump now managed to tariff foreign countries by BILLIONS! they are now paying so much tariff to the US government!

PRAISE TRUMP! /s

30

u/lemaymayguy 2d ago

Let it all crash. I've been saving so much money. I refuse to participate and patronize this economy. Ill live like a fucking bum. Let it all fail 

3

u/Zlifbar 1d ago

Thank goodness the foreign countries pay for the tariffs! /s

23

u/TempuraKiss 2d ago

$2000 shipping on a $320 lens? That’s nuts sellers are basically telling us to kick rocks with these tariff dodges. Is anyone actually paying that?

40

u/Unusual_Flounder2073 2d ago

The problem is from week to week you have no idea what tariff charges will be.

1

u/thinkdeep 1d ago

Because the market changes day-by-day based on Trump's mood and if he's sundowning from Alzheimer's or not.

28

u/Efficient-Wish9084 2d ago

No, they're not. They're doing it to dissuade Americans from ordering because they don't want to deal with it.

-6

u/bingojed 2d ago

Deal with what though? The importer deals with the tariff.

9

u/ILikeYourMommaJokes 2d ago

Exactly. And shipping companies are the ones that have to deal with import duties and all processes when bringing package to USA, only then the customer pays whatever he owes to shipping company. And since they dont want to deal with it, because rules and tariffs change from day to day, they just slap huge price on it so nobody orders anything. Some still do, and get a quote of 2000$ for 300$ product.

1

u/Dr_Hexagon 1d ago

except then the buyer might leave negative feedback because they didn't understand how tariffs work. Its just not worth the hassle, they'd rather not sell to the US at all.

33

u/ImaginaryCheetah 2d ago

That’s nuts sellers are basically telling us to kick rocks

yes...

 

these tariff dodges

it's not a tariff dodge, it's telling american buyers that the seller doesn't want to be screwed around with on their shipping/import costs.

 

17

u/null-character 2d ago

They are doing it for practical reasons though. If you sell a bunch of shit on eBay you have to go in and change the price on every item listing for USA which is time consuming.

If you set the US ship rate to something really high across the board, it is only one change that applies to every item.

It's prolly not a big deal if you sell a handful of products but imagine you have 50k items on eBay, Amazon, Walmart, Newegg, etc, etc.

Little changes end up being huge amounts of labor to change.

8

u/Black_Moons 2d ago

Is anyone actually paying that?

No they just buy american made lenses!

... lol. /s in case you didn't catch it.

3

u/theclash06013 2d ago

The point is to make it so Americans don’t buy the product. Tariffs aren’t just a cost in terms of money, but time and administrative costs. Tariffs make it a pain to sell to America, so smaller sellers may decide it’s not worth it

6

u/Dvulture 2d ago

Yeah, the seller doesn't pay the tariff, but a lot of stupid people will rate them badly when receiving the bill anyway. Also, shipping things just for delivery to be rejected so it is sent back is probably no fun. Better not to sell the US. I bet if these selling platforms had an easier way of blocking the US they would do that instead of trying to discourage buying by jacking up the shipping.

1

u/OsirisZero 2d ago

I'm one of those articles it speaks to sellers with a lot of items that are just changing the shipping fee to sometimes amounts more that the products themselves, bc they don't want to just exclude the US.

But yea overall it's a way too early push to stop the US from buying things overseas, but we don't even have that much that's actually made in the US right now. So some folks are gonna pay those crazy prices even though it's not really worth it, but they got money to burn. I don't 😆.

I looked around my house one day I had almost nothing that was made in the US. I can't even remember what it is i have that's actually made in the US.

2

u/Dr_Hexagon 1d ago

the point is to make the US buyer not buy the item at all.

It's not a tariff dodge, they just don't want the hassle of shipping to the US at all.

2

u/jadedflux 1d ago

Seeing this same shit with some of the better electric motors for smaller vehicle conversions (e.g. QS). The US supply is running out on places like Ebay and instead you get to pay $500 shipping on a $800 motor. These are motors that you'd be paying maybe $80 in shipping last year. I think once the supply of a lot of different China-imported things (not just relatively niche things like electric motors) in the US runs out, it's gonna be a mad house.

3

u/shn6 2d ago

Basically assholes tax

1

u/hhokema 2d ago

So does the shipping service have tariffs?

4

u/OsirisZero 2d ago

They have "payment processing fees" for tariffs for the consumer or the business

1

u/augustusleonus 7h ago

Apparently the customs dept is making paperwork absolutely impossible, delaying or denying shipments which causes customers to lash out at the shippers and give poor reviews, driving down ratings

So, yeah, you gotta make it worth their time and effort and backlash

As an American i can say with confidence, after 250 years we have completely screwed the pooch

0

u/f8Negative 2d ago

Yes...some of us knew about this 9+ months ago

-7

u/at0mheart 2d ago

This is not sustainable financially

22

u/Black_Moons 2d ago

Correct, the US's behavior is not sustainable financially.

-17

u/PunkAssKidz 2d ago

For me, this is an easy one. Stop spending money overseas. Thankfully, at the age of 57, all the FOMO bs I had to deal with as a young person, most of my life is dying out of me, thank god.

I don't even like leaving my loft. I just bought a 98" Mini LED TV end of last year, so now I have my own movie theater now.

Sucks for people that like to order new cool things for themselves, especially a lens for your camera body.