Mine reached Sydney 7 days ago and I'd been checking on their tracking site for movement... when it hadn't moved all week and cos Ajax told me to, I rang them. They were willing to wait forever for me to contact them because they weren't going to send it out before I paid duty! They had my number but they didn't try very hard to reach me, and I have an answering machine. The upshot is I have to ring them tomorrow, Monday, to get a hold of their duty people, whatever they're called... those ones don't work on Sundays. :P Then and only then will my box be on the move again. sigh I don't know how much duty I have to pay yet, I got the upgrade but it's not just 10% gst from what others have mentioned. :(

I think there's a flat fee of about $35 for the "services" of the company. Did you notice their name? "Piranha"? Say's something, doesn't it?

April, I purchased the full version of P5, and my GST charge was $64.91 (Aust) and the "service fee" was $34.52, total $99.43. Piranha Customs and Forwarding rang me on Friday l3th, and they left a message to ring them back on my answering machine however, and they also rang back again later when I was home. In my haste to grab a pen and because I did not have no glasses on at the time, I accidently pressed the wrong button and erased the original message, silly me. You can pay the amount by credit card over the telephone too, which is what I did. Their telephone No is 02 9693-2344 at Mascot in Sydney if this helps. They have to ring you to give you the options of paying, so don't know why you or Ajax did not hear from them, your telephone No would have appeared on their documentation, and it seems the whole shipment to Australia arrived at the same time on a Qantas flight into Sydney. Bit 'slack' if you ask me. All installed, registration went smoothly, just have not had enough time to play with it this weekend alas. So far with what I have looked at in it, I have no problems, except linking to my P4 runtime, just can't find the option in the menu that was in Jelissa's tutorial so far. Hope you get it soon. Jan

When I purchased P4 over a year ago - I paid $200AU for the upgrade, $150 for Fed-Ex shipping, then an extra $100 for Aust. customs before I finally got it. So I'm interested if you can confirm that the add-on price is only around $100 for shipping if ordered through Curious Labs. Also hope you get it soon. Thanks.

The AU$35 services fee is exactly what I was going to pin them down for. Is that not part of what we paid CL for shipping already??? Why is there this extra EXTRA??? And why was it not mentioned??? johndevitt, off the top of my head, the p5 upgrade from p4 is US$179 and the airborne shipping was SUPPOSEDLY US$60... which you pay at the CL site. Then once it gets to sydney they will charge you yet another AU$35 service fee!!! Outrageous!!! I'm going to email CL about that. The GST I can live with... What I don't like is finding out there's more delivery service fee on top of it all that we could not have expected. If it was all bundled up at the CL site ordering I would have taken it in stride. There's no other way to get P5 early. But I don't like hidden costs. CL has to be made aware. starlet even said they made special arrangements to try to find the cheapest service for us. If airborne duped CL into making it look cheaper on the CL site but then shafting us buyers once they've got our boxes locked down in Sydney, that is NOT right.

The $35 fee is for customs inspection, not for postage. It comes from Piranha Customs, not airborne. As far as I can make out, they're a private contractor doing certain types of customs inspections under contract to the government. The GST isn't charged on airborn's fees either. It's charged on the cost of the software, so you get a $35 flat fee for customs inspection plus GST instead of the old style import duty. Airborne and CL have nothing to do with either charge.

So both are government charges? sigh oh well, I told starlet about it... Thanks Ajax, I didn't get all that info today. I just know my service fee and the gst totalled $70 :P But P5 is finally on its way across the continent to my home! :)

That's my understanding anyway. Hurts in the old hip pocket, doesn't it?

don't know about anyone else but if the couriers suddenly decide they want to charge me extra for delivery, they've got a nicely coloured doorstop on their hands, 388 is all i'm going to pay for it & that's the money CL asked for I'm not paying another penny more than that.

fyi :) starlet confirmed that they had no way of knowing about customs inspections in various countries. mine arrived yesterday afternoon and it's now after midnight cos i had to read the manual 8) happy sigh