I Bought A Pixel 6 Directly From Google Store
When you see the title, some of you might think “So what?”, it isn’t a big deal. Yes, for some countries, it is not a big deal, but for others it is a huge thing. If you don’t have a Google store in your country or Google officially doesn’t support Pixel devices in your country, it is very hard for a Pixel fan to buy the device directly from an official store.
I live in Sri Lanka and there is no Google authorized seller here. We can buy Pixel phones few weeks after they were released, from some local shops but I’m not sure that they import those devices legally. I suspect that they are hand carrying (Go to another country, buy few devices and bring them in your luggage with you) them to Sri Lanka. So there is no need for import tax/duty and import license. Also there is another authority in Sri Lanka called TRCSL (Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka) and authorized sellers have to register the IMEI numbers of communication devices with TRCSL, but that is also not done for the Pixel devices in local shops. Another caveat is the price. They sell these devices for a huge price. The current lowest price for Pixel 6 in Sri Lanka is more than 1000 USD and Pixel buds (A series) is more than 160 USD. A week ago, it was more than that.
Now you understand why it is a big deal for us to buy Pixels directly from Google store. I did it fully legally for a lower price. So I decided to write this article about that process. I created an unboxing video explaining this process in Sinhala language. I’ll link this article there as well.
I wanted to buy a Pixel flagship phone for a long time. I waited for Pixel 4 but they messed it up. Then I waited for Pixel 5 but it had mid range specs. Yet I tried to buy it from local shops but it was not available even after 3 months after release, probably due to COVID travel restrictions. So I moved my target to Pixel 6. The rumors came and it was gonna be big. So I looked at ways of buying it. I could wait a few months and get it from a local shop for a higher price or I could find a way to directly import it from an official store. There were two main issues. One is the frequency band issue. There is a possibility that we have different frequency bands in Sri Lanka and the phone will not be useful for communication. So I cannot just import it from any country. I have to be careful. The other issue is the legality of it. I didn’t know whether it is legal or illegal to import mobile devices to Sri Lanka. So I have to find that out as well. So I looked for those and what I found were that there are people using imported US/Singapore phones without any band issues and it is possible to import mobile phones legally by paying tax and duty.
So now I have few ways of importing this. If I can directly order from Google Store to my home, that would be amazing. But they don’t ship to Sri Lanka. I looked for other official stores such as BestBuy, Amazon, B&H but most of them have the same policies as Google store. It is possible to buy from Amazon or eBay, but only from 3rd party sellers, so there is a risk. Also they didn’t take preorders. Another method is to directly travel to that country and buy it from there. We can go to Singapore/Dubai in a weekend and buy the phone. It’ll still be cheaper than the local price, but due to quarantine laws and travel restrictions, it is not that easy this year. Pixel 6 is only available in very few countries for now. US has the lowest price of them all, but it is not easy to travel there. Another method is to ask someone coming from US to bring the phone with them. You can directly order from an official store to there apartment before they leave. But I don’t know anyone coming recently. Also if that person is already bringing a new phone, I can’t ask them to bring another one because they might get into trouble with airport customs. It is advisable only to bring your personal mobile device through airport. Multiple unboxed phones will raise suspicion as a smuggler. Another method is to use a parcel forwarding service. There are many of them. They give us an address in that country and we can order to that address and they will forward that parcel to us using a reputed courier service. Since they are consolidating multiple packages and send one big package, the courier charges are very low. That was the method I chose first. I used myUS. So I preordered from BestBuy to MyUS address because BestBuy had the most recent delivery date out of all the store. Google Store’s delivery date was weeks later. But, the next day I received an email saying that they cancelled the order because they cannot ship to that address. I looked in to that issue and found that there is a Google Store policy not to ship phones to parcel forwarding addresses, and BestBuy was also following it. One of the pros of using MyUS other than cheap courier charges was that their address is tax free. Since they are sending those items out of US, we don’t have to pay US taxes. Anyway, we cannot use those services with Google Pixels. Also there are some other services that has many hosts with different addresses. So it was possible to find a new home address that Google hasn’t banned yet and forward through that, but I felt that it was too risky. So I decided to use the only available option, which is to forward it through a friend living in US.
So I asked few friends living in US for their postal codes and checked the tax amount for those addresses. You can check the tax amount from BestBuy using just the postal code. The tax varied between 25–50 USD depending on the state. Mind that this is for Pixel 6 pre-order, so the price was 599$ and the Pixel Buds (A series) was free. I finally decided an address with 41.93$ tax due to convenience (25$ address was busy that week). My plan was to order to that friend’s apartment and then use DHL to pick it from there. So I called DHL to ask for their prices. I told them it would weigh less than 1 kg and the size would be normal mobile phone box size for the estimation. They said (They charge for the volumetric size) it will be around 18,000 LKR (90 USD) (This amount changed later). They also said that the custom duty and tax will be around 7.5–10% of the whole package value. So I decided to go with that option.
Then, I tried to place the order in Google Store, because the delivery date was updated to a recent date. But it was not successful the first time because there are limits in different banks in Sri Lanka for the amount of dollars we can spend. So the bank declined the purchase. I called that bank and they said that they cannot allow that amount. So I tried with a different bank. Their card also had some limits but when I called them, they agreed to allow that purchase. So I had to make the purchase while in the call. They temporary increased the limit for few minutes. This is a new issue Sri Lankans face due to COVID/political economic hit. This wont be a problem in most other countries. When making a USD payment using LKR we also have to pay a conversion fee of 3.5% and stamp duty of 2.5%. I paid 640.93 USD and I had a 133,854.69 LKR transaction in my bank statement later. The stamp duty was another 3350 LKR. I placed the order on 27th Oct and the delivery date was 20–21 Nov. Later they updated the delivery date to 19–20 and then 10–11 and finally delivered on 10th Nov.
I also found another friend who wanted to buy a Pixel 6. So we decided to ship both of them together so that courier charge would be divided in to two. Both of us made the purchase from Google store at the same time, to the same address but he paid using a US credit card. He is in Sri Lanka but due to aforementioned transaction limits he couldn’t make the payment from Sri Lanka on time. The preorders were closing at the end of that day. So a sibling in US made the payment for him (this detail is important because it came up later with customs clearing). I bought a Kinda Coral and he bought a Stormy black. We both selected Dark olives. We had different delivery dates (probably due to colors) at the beginning and they updated those dates few times and finally they delivered the Stormy Black on 5th Nov and the other three packages on 10th Nov.
Right after that was delivered, I created a DHL order to pick it up. That can be done via DHL website. We have to fill a lot of details though. The weight, the size and the value of the package, each item’s description, the tax amounts paid, the item categories (for tax purposes, countries have different category numbers for different items.), the pick up and drop off addresses, contact details and many more. I didn’t know the exact weight of the box so I Googled and found some reddit articles and estimated one phone box and one buds box should be around 450g. So two sets of them should be less than 1 kg. So I filled 1kg as the weight in their form. It said that an estimated amount is enough for that form and they will measure and put the exact amounts later. Later they updated it to 1.5kg. The size of the box my friend (shipper) in US used to pack our items was 14x15x23 cm. At the end, DHL reserved total estimated value + 10% buffer from my credit card. The total final amount they charged later was 25590.18 LKR (~125 USD). There were some documents that shipper should print and attach to the package and also handover with the package. DHL picked it up within 2–3 hours.
This is the timeline of the delivery:
- November, 10 2021
* 17:13 Local time | Shipment picked up - November, 11 2021
* 01:12 Local time | Arrived at DHL Sort Facility CINCINNATI HUB — USA - November, 12 2021
* 21:08 Local time | Arrived at DHL Sort Facility LEIPZIG — GERMANY - November, 13 2021
* 04:17 Local time | Arrived at DHL Sort Facility LONDON-HEATHROW — UK - November, 15 2021
* 06:33 Local time | Arrived at DHL Sort Facility COLOMBO — SRI LANKA - November, 19 2021
* 18:06 Local time | Clearance processing complete at COLOMBO — SRI LANKA
* 21:12 Local time | Payment is received and recorded for shipment related fees - November, 20 2021
* 13:32 Local time | Delivered
After it was received to Sri Lanka customs, they wanted to us to provide payment proofs and TRCSL registration forms for clearance purposes. So DHL called me and requested those documents. They also delivered the custom retention invoice to me. DHL requested 2 TRCSL registration forms for 2 mobile devices, NIC (National Identity Card) copies of owners and payment proofs for the purchase. I told them that one payment is done from a Sri Lankan bank and the other one was done from a US bank. So they told me to get a letter from the person who made the purchase confirming the payment. I also had to write a letter as the receiver confirming that it was paid using US bank. So we submitted those letters with bank statements. It took me two days to gather all the documents and hand them over to nearest DHL service point. Once they received the documents at customs they processed the package and calculate the tax and duty amounts. Then DHL called me and told me that the tax + duty amount is 23796 LKR (120 USD) and they can pay on behalf of me if I agree to settle it later. I agreed and they paid and cleared the package. Then I received an email with a payment link and I settled it right away. The next day, I received the package.
The total cost for me was 161897.78 LKR (800 USD). I’ve been using this for a week now and there are no issues so far. No frequency band issues, confirmed! Hope this article will help someone.
This is a repost of my Reddit article and the original link is here.
