In preparation for The Big Day, I have some questions about how the shipping from OpenMoko will work.<br><br>How much does one package (with a single phone) weigh (approximately)? What will its dimensions be?<br>
<br>There's been talk about a hub in Europe, has that idea been scrubbed? IF not, will it be in place in time for the first shipments?<br>
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When ordering directly from OpenMoko to Europe, how much will shipping
cost for a 10-pack? Would that package come from the US, China or
Taiwan (just curious)? How much would shipping be for 24 10-packs (approximately 235 phones have been noted for Europe on the Community purchase wiki page)?<br>
<br>If OpenMoko doesn't set up a hub in Europe, I wonder if it would make sense for us consumers to do our own hub-like distribution. Using prices from the Swedish postal service (which is probably not one of the cheapest in Europe), if a single phone package weighs between 500 g and 1 kg, it would cost €24 to send as an insured letter to other European countries. Not all that expensive, I think. <br>
<br>Distribution would probably be even less expensive if we order one package to the country in Europe with the lowest postal rates (maybe combined with a low VAT), then ship phones to one person in each country in the city/region with most buyers, who then posts them domestically to each buyer in other parts of his country, and maybe hands them out to buyers in his own city. <br>
<br>The biggest difficulty would probably be that this would involve a lot of money (over 50 kEUR), and increase the trust required for all this to work. How much we would save on the shipping would be a factor involved in whether this would be worth the trouble. <br>
<br>Buying directly from OpenMoko would probably not provide us with a particularly good guarantee, so some European buyers might prefer to buy from European resellers.<br><br>If we could get the shipping costs (which should be known by now?), we could do some calculations.<br>
<br>/Erland<br><br>