Like everyone else I've seen comment, the content is excellent. Really excellent!
After seeing samples in July, I decided this would make a great birthday present for my son who was to be 16 on August 8th and starting in September a full-time course in Music technology. As a birthday gift I thought I'd better get the physical DVD package. The sit said quite explicitly "shipping in August", so hoped I'd be forgiven if it was a few days late. $31 for international shipping to the UK was absolute extortion! But oh well, bend over and...
August 7th was spent downloading all the gigantic files that were very poorly named - hard to work out which is which and get them in the right order. Turns out I missed one. Then managed to burn them all to two DVDs, creatively use Photoshop to create a nice DVD cover insert and there was a respectable birthday present in lieu of the real thing.
Today I received a letter from a shipping company demanding £8.88 tax and £8 for them to handle it - that's an extra $25! Plus the hassle of going through the payment. It will have cost $99 for the content and an additional $56 to have it on DVD. My advice to anyone international placing an order - just download the content.
I think the customer service around this really stinks. Your 'help' page (which didn't, by the way) still says the DVD is expected to ship in early 2010. At no stage have I received any further communication on my order, just a general email about a month ago to let everyone know that the DVD was now available and would start shipping to backorders soon. Seriously, what does it cost to email me and provide the shipping details - and doesn't the $31 shipping charge cover that cost - 60 seconds of someone's time? What percentage of time would it take to create a system to automate that compared to the time taken (a lifetime?) creating the content? For goodness sake - even if you fulfilled via eBay you'd have a perfectly neat system that would take care of the tax and communication. Better still, get a distributor to handle it. Great product, but it's not going to sell internationally until you sort this.
Like I said, fantastic content, thanks.
Rob.
That's weird. I had mine shipped to australia and there were no fee's. Sounds like something explicit to your country? In that case USPS or any other shipper would never cover that... at least here. I order quite a bit from overseas and have never had a shipping company handle it with me, or had the company I ordered from handle the charges.?!
As for the communication, yes I agree 100%, that could have been better. I did not receive a notice of shipping, and I know that it did not go to my spam filter, because I am the admin for that server, and I checked. So that was something not good.
Cheers,
Steve
Hi there - glad the content is working for you but sorry about the customer service of course. Actually we have kept in constant - some have argued too constant! - touch with those who pre-ordered to let then know exactly what stage the production has been and when to expect delivery. I'm not sure why that communication has not reached you. Since it came from a fairly large database it may go into people's spam of course.
As for international duties and taxes this is a wretchedly random situation and one we are certainly aware of. As the poster below says, he was not charged, and you were. We put identical information on every order so there's no rhyme nor reason.
International shipping is a pain, but until we secure wider distribution, which we are of course actively pursuing, international shipping has been the only solution, albeit one with some inherent issues. We do offer UPS international, which is rather more organized, but sadly quite expensive.
If viewers outside USA have appropriate distributors or retailers they use then we'd be delighted to be in touch with them.
Again, appreciate very much your comments on the content and we'll do our best to improve the customer service.
Have you shipped them yet?
Sorry, missed this post for some reason. All pre-release orders had been shipped more than two weeks ago so anyone who ordered "pre-release" and who has still not received anything should contact orders@keyfax.com.
International shipping can take easily take a week, depending upon country and distance, but if its been more than two weeks then we'll need to investigate further and/or re-send.
Anyone ordering from UK (and other EU countries) should be warned when ordering that any goods imported into the EU with a value over £18 will be liable for a VAT charge of £8.88 and a handling charge of £8 from Parcel Force, thus adding a further £16.88 to the cost. Parcel Force will not deliver until these charges have been paid.
Excellent product - too much packaging.
Paul Twist