Vagabond Elf

September ended up being expensive for me - but this is all in now! The Stealth is something I've been wanting for a while, and I found it for 19,440 shipped on Jungle. I was a bit nervous, never having done Jungle before, and that seemed to good to be true.... but now that it's here, I'm quite pleased. Everything seems intact. The box is worn and some stickers are applied, but that's fine. Only real problem is the tow bar likes to fall off the nosewheel - and he'll be in Battroid mostly anyway, so meh. Wheeljack arriving the same day was just icing on the cake. Today, I am pleased.

Oh, okay! We have some of those up here in the Great White North, but by no means all.

Like, KitKat the chocolate bar? That's worth bringing back from Japan?

Sounds like you've got a solid squadron going there! Did you take the pics on an iPhone? iPhones will display pictures right side up no matter how you hole to phone - but it still has an actual top and bottom, defined in it's code and set by the orientation of the camera, and every other device will display them with the coded top at the top. Which means, if you had your phone upside down when you took the pictures, they're going to be upside down here. As far as I know, you can't fix it using just the phone (well, other than being sure to hold the phone the right way round when you take the picture) but just about any graphics program should let you rotate and save the pic. Just another example of how Apple isn't really building a more connected world, just one better connected to other Apple things. (If you weren't using an iPhone, then more information is required to figure it out.)

5% is the federal tax. Provinces usually have their own tax, which is also charged on most imports. So, Alberta, Nunavut, Yukon and The Northwest Territories pay 5% (since Alberta has no PST, because oil, and the other three aren't provinces and thus can't charge PST). Saskatchewan pays 10%, BC 12%, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland & Labrador, and New Brunswick all pay 13%, Prince Edward Island pays 14%, Quebec pays 14.975% (because saving 0.025 cents on the dollar is important, I guess), and Nova Scotia pays 15%. Which does make me glad I live in Alberta. And yes, I'm pretty sure that even NS's tax is still less than what most of Europe pays. Yay NAFTA!

Canadians musy pay GST (5% Federal Sales Tax) on any imported item valued over 20$ CDN. Canadians resident in provinces other than Alberta may have to pay Provincial Sales Tax or Harmonised Sales Tax as well. (Albertans don't because there is no PST in Alberta. Residents of Yukon, NWT or Nunavut because those aren't provinces and therefore can't have PST. HST is when a province and GoC make a deal to share administrative costs and in so doing reduce the combined GST + PST amount by a couple percent.) Some types of items also have import duties, but to my knowledge toys should not. (I could dig that out but it's a pain, and I'd rather do it tomorrow at work when I can get paid for my efforts - I'm a law librarian, you see.) Items that have been declared as gifts must pay taxes and duties on the amount of the value over 60$CDN. So importing a gift valued at 200$ means the recipient is liable for taxes and duties on 140$. Do note, however, that declaring a commercial item as a gift is a criminal offence in Canada, and that the RCMP and the FBI have a good working relationship. At the minimum, getting caught falsely declaring gifts will cause all your shipments to come under heightened scrutiny. It may also result in all packages sent by you being seized by the Crown, and possibly lease to criminal charges. Underdeclaring the value of a package risks fraud charges, and more relevantly, means that should something go wrong the carrier is only required to indemnify you for the declared value. Canada Post and private couriers are not allowed to release an item unless all taxes and duties have been paid. They are allowed to collect these fees on behalf of Canada Border Services Agency. They are allowed to charge service fees to cover the costs they incur as part of collecting taxes for CBSA; as of this writing CPC charges 10$, and my understanding is that the various couriers are similar. (For a time they were much more expensive, but people began learning the tricks and competition has brought that down to something close too, though still higher than, CPC.) In theory, a recipient can refuse delivery, and have the package returned to CBSA, and then get it themselves, paying the duty and taxes directly to CBSA. However, this means the parcel is returned to it's point of entry. This may be nearby - FedEx and UPS, for example, probably brought it into the country at the nearest international airport. Or it may not. CPC will have brought the package in at one of their main import centres - Vancouver, near Toronto (I forget which outlying city it's actually in), or Montreal. So in practice, it's usually simpler to pay the service fee. Items declared in foreign currencies will have their value converted before calculating import fees. A 20$USD item is, as of right now, worth 21.77$CDN, and would trigger the fees. Not all items are inspected by CBSA, and if it's not inspected, no taxes will be charged, unless they were pre-paid by the shipper. (This is the complaint many Canadians have with ebay's Global Shipping Program, it's forcing us to pay taxes we may not be liable for and charging a substantial service fee in the process.) In my personal experience, items coming from the US are more likely to be inspected than items from the UK or Asia. In summation, then: Canadians will pay at least 10$ + 5% on any package worth more than 20$CDN that is inspected by CBSA, which packages from the US are fairly likely to be.

Until recently I worked for IKEA in Edmonton, and we'd routinely have people who'd driven in from Regina (about 8 hours) or Yellowknife (about 18 hours) with shopping at IKEA being a primary purpose for the trip. And of course something they came for would be sold out, which was always heartbreaking. Then we'd have folks whinging about making a 30 minute drive from the north side of the city. Didn't have much patience for them folks...

Banning via IP creates all sorts of false hits, though. Most people in North America don't have the same IP address from session to session - their ISP has a bunch and assigns them one when they connect. So when you ban someone via IP, you're taking out a couple hundred users. Forums are often okay with using an artillery shell to swat a fly, but that's not the bestest plan for a retailer, who depends on good publicity. Google has better search engines than a lot of sites. I work for a library, and this is a standard technique for about half our databases.

It may be a typo - a typo is when one knows the correct spelling/word/whatever, but hits the wrong key. But merging effect and affect into just effect is very common - and it seems to be even more common when the writer is American. (I haven't done a study, however, this is just my impression. But I've seen semi-professionally edited books contain it, and it's rare enough that someone uses affect correctly that I tend to notice it and celebrate inside.) My guess is it's related to the way most American accents compress "e" and "a" sounds towards each other, so the two words sound very similar when spoken in that accent. Much like how the origin of the Canadian "aboot" is based on the way that "about" and "roof" sound very similar in American accents, but fairly different in most Canadian ones, because we don't tend to converge the vowel sounds so much. Yes, I am full of useless information.

I usually let the effect/affect error slide, because picking on people's grammar is mostly pointless and that specific one is well on its way to becoming a legitimate regional variation... but this one is too funny, so I have to call it out: This sentence is actually saying that Nixon unhooked the USD from the Gold Standard in order to create future Macross collectors. And it makes me imagine him in the White House, surrounded serious men in dark suits, saying "Gentlemen! We will end this wave of social unrest by importing Japanese toys, and distracting all the young men with them!" /crickets ...well, I thought it was funny.

They're discontinued up here, too; if any store is showing inventory, it's just something that hasn't sold yet. Shipping something that large across an international border would be stupidly expensive, in any case. Since just putting it in a truck for delivery in the city starts at $60, I shudder to think what mailing it from Montreal (where the website's warehouse is) to wherever you might be would cost.

Mine's good so far, having been transformed four or so times. The little triangles broke, but that was me being an idiot and forgetting about them. My NUNS triangles are good at the moment. However, mine lives in Battroid, and there does seem to be evidence that it is stress in or going to Fighter mode that causes the plastic to fail. And when I transform it, I pop those pieces off first. Since the ship is packaged in Fighter, I think it is a bit of a gamble now.

I've not seen Frontier, so I could be completely wrong - but I thought the "real" VB-6 didn't have landing gear either? That Shuttle Mode was just for spaceflight and re-entry, and it spent any time on the ground in Destroid or Battroid modes?

I didn't mean to suggest that you, personally, were being a jerk; if I did so by accident, I apologise. I'm merely saying that I can understand why their pre-order policy exists. Indeed, I believe you started out by saying you'd taken your business elsewhere because you dislike they way they do things - and that is the perfect response. For myself, I think their policy is excessive and their enforcement erratic, which does not lead to an ideal customer transaction. Particularly with something that they will almost certainly be able to sell on to someone else. (And with 21 years of retail experience, I have both a lot of sympathy for any seller - but also high standards; I expect them to be at least as good as I am.) So I prefer not to deal with N-Y myself; though in this case I have because the only other pre-orders I'd seen were notably more expensive. So, that shows how strong my dislike isn't. (For discussion's sake, if it was my store, my official policy would be something like: Pre-orders are contracts that cost us time and money, and so you are expected to fufil your end of the deal and pay for them. Persons who repeatedly fail to complete their pre-orders may be refused further service. Nevertheless, we understand that exceptional circumstances may arise; if you wish to cancel a pre-order, please contact us, and it will be considered on a case-by-case basis. And then my criteria for allowing it or not would be: 1) how easy it will be to sell on; 2) how dire the customer's circumstances apparently are; and 3) whether this has happened before.)

For those into Billy - the replacements are in our system now. Canadian stores should have them by 1 August, not sure about elsewhere. And - I rather doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference. Even the Medium Brown colour is returning, yay! Although there might be details that aren't obvious until they're in hand.

There's a cultural difference too, as I understand it - I'm told that in Japan, a promise is still very important. (Unlike North America, where we routinely ignore them.) So when you place a pre-order, and then cancel it, you're not just handing them with stock they need to move, you're also breaking a promise - and I could see how that would cause them to view you as the sort of arrogant jerk whose business they don't want anyway. I dunno, I see their side, even with a NorAm cultural perspective. When you place a pre-order, they spend time and money on fufiling it. When you cancel simply because you "changed your mind," that costs them more time and money. I've got friends with small stores, and I've seen them take a real bath on some things because of the "oh, I changed my mind" attitude. So I can't fault N-Y for being unhappy with folks who cancel.

The outer panels are each a centimetre thinner... which reduces the amount of wood IKEA consumes in a year by many thousands of tonnes. Yes, IKEA sold a lot of Expedits. (Also, if you thing the fan rage is bad here, you should be glad you didn't have to deal with the folks freaking out about how the new shelf is 2cm shorter than the old one.) But Kallax vs. Expedit is a good example of what I suspect will happen with Billy - the new shelf will be similar, but not identical. Cheaper is part of the goal, but the honest reason was environmental sustainability. IKEA takes very seriously it's goal of replacing everything it uses, and that small change makes a huge step in that direction. (I don't remember the exact number, but another goal is that in the next decade or so IKEA will produce more electricity than it consumes, by building wind farms, putting solar panels on the roofs of the buildings, and other such measures.) I'd be worried about putting 3 Detolfs on top of a Kallax (or Expedit). I'd be worried about putting one Detolf on top of an Expedit. The outer panels are hollow, like a door, and the reinforcement is designed to support the interior shelving, not the 2mm of laminate on the outside. So I guess it's a good thing the 1x5 isn't coming back anyway.

It's worth noting that Billy is also scheduled to be discontinued (in October, I think). I'm sure something similar will replace it, but I don't know what - I work in Kids/Workspaces, not Living Rooms. Stock will persist for a while, but it's going to go away. (Which makes me sad, because it's one of the few things that still exists in MEdium Brown, which I love, and my living room is all Billys. I'm tempted to buy a couple shelves and just leave them boxed in the basement.) I don't know specific numbers for the Detolf, but I do know in general that black-brown outsells wood-look at around 2:1, which is probably why the beech is going away. White is something that gets asked for quite frequently, and it's cheaper, being a simpler finish, so I'm not surprised to hear it's coming back. Stockholm, as a family, is aimed at the people who equate value with cost. There's a significant number of people who assume IKEA furniture is low-quality because it's inexpensive, and who claim it's not pricey enough to be worth buying. Thus, the Stockholm family, which is very high-end for quality, but is aimed more at people who want their house to look like a magazine. Thus the "artsy" styling.

Damnit, now I want a Hello Kitty valkyrie.

Mine's good so far - the little triangles on the bottom broke, but that was me being a moron and forgetting they were there. The NUNS are fine, though. [touches wood.] I leave mine mostly in Battroid, which I suppose is another datum for the "too much pressure in Fighter mode for the bad batch of plastic" theory.

This has probably been said, but it looks like a VF-25 and a Legios from MOSPEADA had a baby. Add me to the "I love it!" side for the missile pod.

VISA, AmEx, and MasterCard all charge very high fees to merchants who want to be able to accept their payments. I suspect that international fees to merchants are even higher in many cases. So - and this is pure speculation now - it seems not unlikely that Paypal costs HLJ less than regular credit cards do.

It's (quite likely literally) on the boat. It's out of Japan's hands but not yet into Royal Mail's, so there's no other information available. Parcels traveling SAL can travel by surface or by air and are added to containers as space permits, so they spend a lot of time in places with no ability to report their location.

I haven't bought Macross toys in ages... but looking for characters for a Transformers photocomic I do, I rediscovered it. With a couple new arrivals having shown up, I thought I'd share:

All postal insurance claims are initiated by the shipper. They have to be, because the shipper is the party that's been insured. It's good to know that NY will actually do that, though - lots of shippers drag their feet on initiating a claim, because it's a pain in the bottom to do.