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FCC Certification email - real risk of customs seizure?

EricMcnieceEricMcniece Member
edited June 2015 in Archive

I received an email this morning regarding FCC certification, and as it was addressed to "North-American Backer", I assume that many others did as well. The email details how the device is not getting FCC certified because of costs associated with doing so. The choices presented were a little scary:

  1. Because of this, it might be possible that customs take a hold of your Homey if you are unlucky
  2. You get refunded

Is that it?! Alright, I've got some questions...

  1. What is the likelihood of customs blocking the shipment?
  2. Has anyone here ever had problems with importing non-FCC-certified devices? I'm in Canada and have brought in dev radios from China many times over the years with no issues
  3. Did Athom really investigate certification and costs before creating this product? Seems like a pretty huge oversight
  4. If customs seizes the product, what happens to it? Does it get returned to the shipper, and can we get a refund after that... or am I straight up gambling with $500??
  5. Are you guys in any way able to contact customs for these countries and inquire as to whether this will be a problem for shipping?

Comments

  • StefanStefan Member

    Hi Eric,

    Thanks for your post! I will try to answer your questions, of course. so here we go!
    1. We have no idea. It seems very unlikely that they will open the package and check for the content, and check that vs their database, especially if the device is not shipping from China (it isn't, its send from the Netherlands).
    2. Same story. We are not located in Canada ourselves, so we don't know the odds. If, in your experience, the change is virtually non-existent, then that is great!
    3. We did, really. However, we also hoped for more orders from the US to justify the certification ;). Next to that, we recently decided that later on, we will do some redesigns in order to make Homey better to produce in larger numbers, and that would mean new certifications, so with the current pool of orders, it is just not financially feasible for us to follow this path.
    4. They do not return it to the shipper, so we cannot give a refund after shipping, as we can't spend our money twice unfortunately. We also wished this was dealt with in another way by customs. :(
    5. unfortunately we can't, as they will just refer to the FCC guidelines. Next to that, according to the official rules, the importing party is responsible.

    If you have any more questions you know where to reach us. Believe me, this decision was a hard one for us, but we chose to be open towards this matter and communicate the situation. We just cannot spend 200 euros per Northern American Homey extra.

  • Thanks for the update Stefan.

    Some reading material for the curious:

    TLDR;

    • There are exemptions for some products, but they are hard to stick to
    • Using FCC-certified radio modules can help cut down on certification costs, but this does not exempt products from certification
    • "Kits" are not exempt, nor are development tools

    Section 302(b) of the Communications Act (47 USC § 302a(b)) provides that:

    No person shall manufacture, import, sell, offer for sale, or ship device or home electronic equipment and systems, or use devices, which fail to comply with regulations promulgated pursuant to this section.

    Seems like this is a huge risk, both for Athom and the backers. I don't mean to scare people, and I fully understand the business decision that Athom needs to make, so I apologize for this post... however it does seem important for your customers to be informed.

    Please let me know if I am out of line :(

  • I don't think you are out of line. It is always nice to warn fellow users of any potential issues that may arise. That said, I do believe that some of the info you provide could be misinterpreted by some fellow users.. In this case it is always the responsibility of the importer to stay complient with FCC rules and guidelines. The fine that was issued to asustek was because is is an importer and /or has branches in the country we're the rules applied.. importing the homey is no different than importing any other (electronic) device.

  • Fire69Fire69 Member

    Well, I'm glad to see it is being shipped from the Netherlands, this means no importation for us Europeans! :-)
    But I agree this is a big risk for people outside of the EU.
    Was this communicated before in the campaign? If your Homey gets seized, that's a lot of money just lost...

  • That doesn't really matter.. in giving the customer the option for a refund they are showing great consumer service. Most businesses would just take your money, ship, leave the risk at the importer side and would have done nothing (legally ) wrong. (Correct me if I'm wrong please)

  • kriebelkous said:
    I don't think you are out of line. It is always nice to warn fellow users of any potential issues that may arise. That said, I do believe that some of the info you provide could be misinterpreted by some fellow users..

    Absolutely, and thank you for the constructive criticism. I didn't take enough time to really go through the list of recent enforcements to find a case that matched, and I agree that the ASUSTeK example is not representative of this scenario.

    This situation makes me so sad!! I have been totally stoked for just over a year now, it's just really hard to put $440CAD at risk just over some potential shipping problems. I looked at form 740, which is required to declare devices that may cause interference and it needs an FCC ID... and I did find an example of an enforcement scenario where companies provided false or inaccurate IDs and were fined for it.

    The Risks and Challenges section of the campaign makes mention of how costly CE and FCC certification are, and notes that production may be delayed because of the testing required, and even that they "took this into account"... but it doesn't mention not obtaining certification.

    I would be happy just waiting until they actually go through with the certification, even if it needs to take another 6 months. Maybe they would consider this? It wasn't an option offered in the email however, and the process would likely take a long time.

  • kriebelkouskriebelkous Member
    edited June 2015

    My guess is that athom will grow and expand fast if homey is half as good as promised. And if they do FCC certificates are inevitable. You could email Stefan to see if another option can be explored if you are not willing to take the risk of importing now and share my faith that athom is a multinational in the making :) I can think of a few win-win situations that can rise from this.

  • Fire69Fire69 Member

    kriebelkous said:
    That doesn't really matter.. in giving the customer the option for a refund they are showing great consumer service. Most businesses would just take your money, ship, leave the risk at the importer side and would have done nothing (legally ) wrong. (Correct me if I'm wrong please)

    I do think it matters. Sure, it's nice you can ask for a refund. But in the mean time, you've been patiently waiting for your Homey for over a year only to be forced to either risk your money or get refunded. That would be a pretty big disappointment for me...

    Hopefully there will be a future solution for non-EU backers.

  • Lots of emotions! Hugely disappointed, but also very glad that they gave us a heads up. I think a lot more people would be downright pissed off if Homey started getting border-seized.

    Thank you, Stefan and Emile. I know this must be difficult.

  • StefanStefan Member

    It is, thank you all for understanding :). For us too it means quite a lot of orders that we have to cancel, and refund, which of course does not help us either. We have took it into account at all times, but with US/CA orders stagnating a little bit, and our decision for a redesign for larger scale production (which would make the certification of the first Homey invalid), these were the only options. As we cannot give a definitive timeline on when we will do a US move/certification, we have not provided extra waiting as an option. Please note that this is not merely non-EU, but rather only US/CA backers. All the other countries of the world we can ship to.

    Thanks a lot for your support and the insightful discussion! Let us know by mail which path you want to take.

    Best,

    Stefan

This discussion has been closed.