How can people ask me to undervalue a shipment?

Gently kissing someone while you stab them in the back doesn’t make the knife wound okay!

If you want to get into what is tiresome then we can do that if you like?

Fair enough.

Naw, I’m good. I’m happy to pleasantly disagree. :slight_smile:

Okay but lets be clear on what we disagree on, I am all for paying taxes for healthcare and social support, 100%.

Unfortunately this only accounts for a tiny fraction of what taxes are used for.

I am not for paying taxes to invest in weapons, murder, oppression of countries and full on bloody warfare so people can have petrol and drive around in their cars. To a lesser extent I am not interested in supporting a government that generates ‘jobs for the boys’ that build systems for the very rich that no one else wants, erosion of healthcare systems with the intent of destroying them completely and replacing it with private healthcare, the shutting down of libraries, etc… etc…

Opposing these things will never get ‘tiresome’ … never ever and I will challenge anyone who says that.

Sorry!

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And in that context, I would say we totally agree. Well put.

And to also be clear, my ‘tiresome’ comment was not directed at you but rather at the broader group of customers/clients who make these undervaluing requests. My assumption is their intent is less nuanced and meaningful than yours, that the more common intent is “paying more sux, taxes are annoying” rather than “I resist corruption and military, etc”.

Don’t you just love text based discussion :joy:

Yep, we’re in total agreement :smiley:

I actually just did some fact checking, here in the UK we seem to have a weird situation where the perception is that social services are ‘contracting’ but the spending seems to be going up. I don’t fully understand it.

I live in a small town, population 4,600, so naturally know and interact with quite a lot of people on a regular basis - I mean it’s hard to walk through town on market day and not say hello to something like 30, 40, 50 maybe even as many as 60 people! Over the years I have got to know plenty of folk quite well, and a reasonable portion of them are in receipt of social care; they are all being what I can only describe as ‘psychologically tortured’ to try and make them give up their claim.

If you want a heartbreaking insight into what social care really looks like in the UK watch “I Daniel Blake” I’d really like to hear what you make of it. It’s incredibly accurate.

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Great movie!

I’m also in agreement with most that has been said in this thread. I’ve been asked to undervalue goods many times and have never done so. In fact, I personally tend to not do business with people who ask me for this. Most of the time when doing trades online, the only way to judge someone’s character is the little bit of back and forth you get in the few messages you sent and if someone manages to make a bad impression in a simple interaction like that, I take that as a sign that I’m better off without any ties to them. Of course, it’s not necessarily a good idea to do this when running a business, but I think it’s at least very understandable that you feel upset about being asked so often.

As for taxes, I think that while there’s a whole lot of things wrong with how governments are run and what individuals and organisations are paying how much into this common pool of money, I think that these are issues that have to be addressed on other routes and aren’t a justification for cheating on this contract with the rest of society around you. I think it’s shameful how common and socially acceptable tax evasion is.

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I would - A) Not be offended B) Simply ignore those emails (since it’s already clear on the site)

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@odevices , we all know you’re a sketchy dude with questionable ethics and morals :sunglasses:… but even so… being put into a weird position of deceit by a person you don’t even know … your feelings are justified!! gah!!

I have friends who happily tell me all the time that they pirate shows/movies I work on… or ask if i can leak stuff to them pre-release like that’s somehow ok. It’s such a puzzling thing where I’m internally like… “you know I do this for a living right and that would be absolutely damaging/devastating to my career! What the fuck?”. So all I can do without going on a huge lecture they’d never understand is just the same “No” time and time again.

With the shipping taxes - It’s probably a mix of greed, naivety and ignorance. It’s not like this thing is a generic obvious product like a pair of socks. One look at this from a curious customs agent will reveal that it’s certainly not worth $50 and all it takes is one google search and they’ll know how much it’s worth and… Kaboom… taxes and penalties. They’re not dumb. Your company also has “devices” in the name! I think they’d sniff out a lie pretty quick!

It’s kinda nuts when you think about it, Outlandish requests to lie to save $200 when they probably have $8000 of Eurorack gear that software can easily accomplish for $50.

Sometimes you get burned, sometimes a package comes through clear. When those fees come you gotta pay up. The usual cliché line applies: The only certainty in life is death and taxes

To be brutally harsh, If a user is going to fret over $150 in Eurorack-land they should switch to VCV and not use hardware.

I don’t know where I’m going with this mini-rant. Bye! :smiley:

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Oh actually, I DO have a question:

So, once you tell them no… do they freak out and get all mad or is it more of a “oh well, at least I asked” kinda thing?

If they get mad at you for not wanting to lie, that’s a customer I wouldn’t want to have.

No, I’ve never had anyone freak out from my saying no and only a few cancellations.

This. In software it’s even worse. People don’t even consider that the piece of software they’ve stolen took someone a lot of time to develop and make. In terms of the amount of effort that goes into programming, it’s like just stealing a house without any remorse.

I think people just in general do not understand the amount of work that goes into SOO many things today.

Especially in Brian’s case. He developed the hardware and the software. Just an immense amount of work, and if people really understood it, no one would balk at the price of any of his modules.

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… at least there’s no swedish business which “streams” (steals) your product
and gives you 0.00397 dollar per stream. all legal, all completely normal of course.
modern times, just adapt to it kilchhofer you’re so freaking antiquated man, get used to the fact that music is free…:money_mouth_face: we live in a free world and music ffs belongs to everyone, you can’t stop the revolution! :crazy_face:

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I really like the challenging philosophical turn this discussion is taking, it made me think that most of what has been said can be generalised to “how can people undervalue other people?”

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Hey, that’s more than they’re paying me! How did you negotiate that deal?! :laughing:

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after you said you wouldn’t cheat the system? Yikes.

well ja, it’s all about respect. the internet makes it very easy to be disrespectful.

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and also, the people disconnect. Some people literally don’t know if they’re talking to a faceless company or a one-man operation.

… and faceless companies operate on a front line defence basis where the operators are taught to get rid of customers without doing anything to resolve their problems to save money and only escalate to tier two support if the customer gets really angry, makes threats etc… over time this has resulted in a customer base that gets angry really quickly when things go wrong because it’s the only way to get a result.

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VAT charges suck when ordering from overseas, unfortunately thats the law. It is wrong to ask a false declaration. I did it once it felt wrong at the time and it very nearly backfired on me, customs asked me for transaction details etc they wanted to know exactly how much i spend on this item before they would release it. I would never do it again i felt stupid for asking to save like 50 quid.

Besides the small duty for a module is literally peanuts compared to what the Government take off me in VAT from my business everything 3 months.

I know quite a few self employed (or business owning) folk who claim all the vat back on their modules as they are “for business purposes” when that isn’t the case.

When I was in Berlin buying my first Modular from the shop were pretty freaked out that I wasn’t going to be running the costs through my books. It was completely assumed that the vat would be reclaimed.