News USPS had ceased accepting parcels from China and Hong Kong late Tuesday, potentially affecting numerous PC parts — service was restored by early We...

For several years PC hardware prices here in Germany have consistantly been high. And strangely enough it has nothing to do with decisions made on the other side of the Atlantic. It does have something to do with hardware manufacturers (such as Nvidia and Intel) gouging and cheating the crap out of consumers. Selling a consumer GPU for 3000+ Euros? If users give in to this crap, then the next Nvidia GPU launch will see a 4000+ Euro GPU and so on and so on...

I swear, if I see a game devopler list a 5090 as a requirement to play...I'll never purchase anything from that developer again.
 
For several years PC hardware prices here in Germany have consistantly been high. And strangely enough it has nothing to do with decisions made on the other side of the Atlantic. It does have something to do with hardware manufacturers (such as Nvidia and Intel) gouging and cheating the crap out of consumers. Selling a consumer GPU for 3000+ Euros? If users give in to this crap, then the next Nvidia GPU launch will see a 4000+ Euro GPU and so on and so on...

I swear, if I see a game devopler list a 5090 as a requirement to play...I'll never purchase anything from that developer again.
Unfortunately some developers force you to have a RT enabled GPU these days.

Edit:
Out of topic, I see you like bequiet! stuff as well. I have two PSU's, PurePower 11 400W and PurePower 12M 650W, both Gold rated. Additionally, Pure Rock Slim cooler for CPU :)
 
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I would be willing to bet that the change came more out of:

"Well, what the hell are we going to do with all this stuff?" rather than an actual reversal of course.

My first thought as well. Between Amazon, Temu, Aliexpress, Ebay, Walmart.com, etc the number of direct from China products must number in the dozens per second at this point.
 
I imagine fully stopping shipments would have become a logistical nightmare within less than a week. Its definitely one of those situations where its likely better to keep rolling as it is, and figure out what changes you want to make, before wholesale swapping to a new process. I dont envy them though, these changes will likely cause quite a bit of work on the back end.
 
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Its basically an anti Temu rule. Aliexpress never really got as popular as Temu has.

Temu on the other hand has gotten popular enough that Amazon has been lobbying against them. Which is of course ironic since so much crap on Amazon is the exact same thing, coming from the exact same source as Temu. The only real difference is Amazon wants to gatekeep access so they can charge their middleman fee.

Was Temu abusing a rule that was really meant for person to person packages? Sure. Is amazon abusing that same rule? you bet your ass they were.
 
My first thought as well. Between Amazon, Temu, Aliexpress, Ebay, Walmart.com, etc the number of direct from China products must number in the dozens per second at this point.
I've never ordered from Temu, Ali-Express, or any other Chinese e-commerce platform, but I have bought a few cheap things on Ebay, Newegg, and Amazon that were shipped directly from China. For me, it really wasn't mostly about saving money, but primarily buying stuff that I didn't see elsewhere.

Did they cancel the discount/subsidized shipping rates from China, as well? That would also go some ways towards making these loopholes less palatable for consumers.

A possible bright side of reducing direct shipments from China is hopefully that packages containing drugs & other contraband have a lower chance of slipping through. Probably still more than enough, but it would be one positive of the new policies.
 
no need to inspect every package to nickle and dime the taxes. places like Temu must be shipping many truckloads over every day. simply charge by weight :)

i'm imagining container ships half full just from them every day. pay by ton as it comes in or we don't unload the ship. it'll even itself out on the average as some stuff is heavier than others and prices don't really reflect the fact. so a cheap heavy thing can even it out with a more expensive lighter item. their packaging is already as cheap and flimsy as possible so they can't really argue that should be factored in. lol

edit: and the writer of the article, should really update it to reflect that they have already reversed the decision.
 
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The pretext for this was stopping the drug flow. But this will not help at all. You need completely different systems to screen for drugs and inspecting parcels to set the tax. At 4M per day no one will inspect all the parcels. They will require the item price on the package and will verify the price from the recipient. It will be a hassle. And only random packages will get inspected - the same as before.
 
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The pretext for this was stopping the drug flow. But this will not help at all. You need completely different systems to screen for drugs and inspecting parcels to set the tax. At 4M per day no one will inspect all the parcels. They will require the item price on the package and will verify the price from the recipient. It will be a hassle. And only random packages will get inspected - the same as before.
Drugs were used to declare state of emergency so the tariffs could be enacted outside the usual process.
 
Its basically an anti Temu rule. Aliexpress never really got as popular as Temu has.

Temu on the other hand has gotten popular enough that Amazon has been lobbying against them. Which is of course ironic since so much crap on Amazon is the exact same thing, coming from the exact same source as Temu. The only real difference is Amazon wants to gatekeep access so they can charge their middleman fee.

Was Temu abusing a rule that was really meant for person to person packages? Sure. Is amazon abusing that same rule? you bet your ass they were.
Bought a 10 port 10Gps switch from Amazon that has a 45% markup it. Literally the same chips and case, but with a different face plate.