Harder Airbrush Reviews 6

First of all I live the airbrushes and the quality is excellent.

My review relates to an airbrush compressor. I ordered direct from the Garder and Steenbeck website. In the corner everything displayed in pounds and I stupidly thought the order was being fulfilled from a UK friendly location. The description of the compressor didn't give any specific warning and I assumed the item was suitable for the UK. When paying in pounds no mention of duty costs or anything.

The order turned up and I then received an email from fedex requesting I pay £60 duty. Opened the compressor and it has a euro plug in it. Effectively I could have ordered the same product for cheaper made for the UK. I appreciate that I was perhaps naive but feel this could all be made clearer when ordering as to be honest why would you ever order from them knowing it's not built for the UK mains. I looked at there terms and conditions and within a mass of pages in does mention duty costs, but come on this could be made clearer when checking out.

I emailed a polite message to highlight this to them and it appears I'm being blocked as they are just be bounced back to me now.

Overall if you are in the UK don't bother and if you have issue you are pretty much on your own. I normally let a company defend themselves or resolve a problem but due to the email situation I cannot do so.

I'm typically cautious when ordering items online to ensure that I either won't incur import fees or will be aware that the item will trigger additional fees. When placing an order for a compressor, I was entirely of the impression that it would be shipped from within the UK, and I feel somewhat misled by the site. Given the costs were stated in pounds, British product ambassadors, and I thought I saw an H&S UK address (can't find it now, of course). Since the site didn't mention shipping from Europe, I proceeded to make an order. I am fully aware that Harder and Steenbeck is a German company. But it is not unusual for companies to stock products locally in regions facing customs charges with a healthy customer base. It appeared to me that this was the case. Yes, now that I've looked through the FAQ, I see a mention of duty to be paid outside of Europe, but this doesn't help me now. It is essential to clearly state on the shop page, particularly for UK visitors, that items will be shipped from Germany. Given the unexpected customs fee of nearly 30% of the product's value, I now have quite a sour taste left in my mouth for Harder and Steenbeck.

Update: I was going to give an additional star for the relatively quick delivery, but I'm taking it away. Irritatingly, as this was shipped from Europe, it is a European appliance fitted with a European plug, with no adapters for the UK. Thankfully, the instructions are bilingual.

Update 2: Customer service at H&S immediately responded to my email expressing my disappointment about the plug and offered to send a UK plug at their expense. I'm happy with this resolution if the plug seamlessly integrates with the hard-wired European plug. I'm adding two stars back to my review. In the end, the cost with shipping and import fees has ended up nearly equivalent to the lowest price I can find in the UK. So I can't really complain. But it hasn't been as smooth as ordering from a UK supplier, so I'm keeping a star off.
Will revisit this review if there are any issues with the supplied plug.

I’ve should have read the experiences here as I got the exact same one:
The package have been sent for a month and a half, it rots somewhere in a warehouse, and the support does not even answer to my mails asking for a refund.

DO NOT ORDER THERE, their hardware may be excellent, they just don’t have any customer support to take care about what may happens.

Not delivered or refunded just ignored cashgrab

Bad Customer Services and slow delivery.
As with the other review so far it was for the Squidmar Evolution 2024 so not a cheap item.
3 and a half weeks for delivery almost 2 weeks of that was just sitting in somewhere in customs where customer services just said "I am sure they will be in touch soon" until I contacted DHL myself and suddenly it was resolved the same day.
Also for anyone ordering from the UK expect a 20% plus charges customs fee when counting it in your budget as they don't add UK VAT on prices.

Stated online that shipping of my Squidmar Evolution 2024 would be no more than 5 business days, but took 2 and a half weeks to ship. Then a further 2 weeks to receive due to import fees (which wasn’t stated online) but it is what it is.

What annoyed me most was I reached out 5 times to customer support and every email was ignored, hands down the worst experience I’ve had with a company, I would not recommend shopping directly with them.