Mr. Fox

I am sorry about what Norwegian citizens and those of many other nations have had to endure at the hands of corrupt governments. Ours was on the fast track to destruction like the others due to extremely corrupt government. There is still more that needs to be done, but the needle if finally moving away from E toward F (fuel gauge analogy). I am middle-class and I am already benefitting greatly in terms of personal finances. My retirement nest egg has recovered from the damaged done by the prior regime and grown more than ever. I will owe significantly less in taxes this year, and even less in 2026 and beyond. The cost of groceries and gasoline is quickly recovering from the inflationary damage they caused. The only ones that stand to lose are those that can work and have taken advantage of the ability to choose not to. Those that cannot work due to physical and mental challenges have seen and will see even more of an increase in their SSI (welfare) benefits. Many that were being unjustly supported by taxpayers are suffering, as they should be. The media calls it "unfair" but everyone else sees it for what it is: a crackdown on fraud and a discontinuation of the illegal receipt of benefits not deserved.

Be careful to not believe anything you hear or read from mainstream media sources. They are dishonest and most of what they publish is a deliberate creation of distortions, fabrications and inappropriate extrapolations. Crafted for the sole purpose of deception and division, perpetrated by a dying cluster of woke America-hating lunatics and criminals trying to resuscitate a nefarious agenda that is being dismantled brick-by-brick. Light destroys darkness. The part nobody that suffers from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) wants to talk about is that the current administration has already delivered in spades on their promises and the nation is already raking in a fortune in tariffs and rebalanced trade arrangements. Things are going exactly as they should be and how patriotic smart people want them to be going, with unprecedented federal revenue flowing in from foreign sources (reciprocal tariffs) and on pace to eclipse what has ever been collected through domestic taxation of American citizens. Combined with the successful seek and destroy mission on internal government-backed fraud and misuse of tax dollars for unworthy and inappropriate purposes, wrongs are being righted in more ways than what can be counted. In a few short months this has been successful to such an extent that income taxes on social security benefits (which could be viewed as double taxation), tips and overtime are no longer necessary, federal income tax obligations for most private citizens and small businesses has been dramatically reduced, with potential to be abolished if they do not get too much insurrection activity from the leftist lunatic fringe. In spite of the insane shrieking and whining about it by a tiny group of traitors and plain old weirdos, our borders are secure for the first time ever. Illegal immigration is moving rapidly in the direction of zero and has already decreased 93% compared with February 2024. South American drug, weapons and human trafficking cartels are being systematically exterminated (literally) by our amazing armed forces. The city with our nation's highest murder rate (our Capital, Washington DC) and out of control crime sanctuary is being reigned in. In a matter of days, the murder rate has been cut from unprecedented levels to single digits in DC, carjacking has decreased by 83%, robberies by 46%, car thefts by 21%, and overall violent crime is down 22%. More good and right things have been achieved in 6 months than the past 60 years, and there is more to come. Thank God. UPDATE! Good news! The effort paid off. A person at UPS cared and listened and looked into it. Based on things mentioned in my emails she realized it was erroneously calculated by UPS. The duty was reduced from around $461 to $81. I thanked her and let her know that I sincerely appreciate her caring enough to re-evaluate it. Hopefully the UPS delivery driver will return with the package tomorrow or Monday and collect the $81. I also emailed Aquatuning to let them know. See attached redacted info. Revised Invoice | UPS

Well, the saga continues. It appears that the people at UPS have only fecal matter for brains. They are saying that a punitive 200% tariff applies to steel and aluminum products where the country of smelting it not known. This is a serious flaw in their application of federal regulations, but I do not have much confidence that I will convince them of their error. The product is not manufactured from steel; primarily copper, acrylic and nickel plating The product has no aluminum components except for the backplate The product is manufactured in China, so "country of smelting" is not unknown Other than the aluminum backplate, none of the other materials are covered by the regulation The extra 200% is being applied to the full retail value of the finished product, which is primarily copper and acrylic. If the country of smelting were unknown the 200% would apply only to the value of aluminum material used to make the backplate, not the enitre retail product Here is what the imbecile that replied to my email offered as his half-assed rationale for applying the normal import duty + extra 200% tariff: UPS Section 232 Steel and Aluminum Form I have messaged Aquatuning by blind copy on all of my email communications with these idiots at UPS. This whole thing is absolutely ludicrous and it is entirely due to their ignorance and incompetence and nothing to do with trade regulations. Rather, their inappropriate application of regulations that are not even applicable to the shipment. Here are my last two replies to them:

I don't understand why anyone would want one anyway. Those beige and brown Noctua fans are the ugliest fans in the world. Why would anyone want that on their GPU? I mean it is one thing for something cheap to be ugly. Something as expensive as a 5090 needs to be superior by all measurements or it is a fail. It needs to run, look, feel and smell phenomenal and be near-perfect to partially make up for the absolutely ludicrous price. At some point the product, service and customer experience degrades to a point that profit margin, no matter how great, will not be sufficient to save a company from destruction. Without sufficient gross revenue there is no opportunity for net profit. Budweiser learned that the hard way not long ago and came close to biting the big one. And, the way they found out is something we need to see leveraged more often. Consumers wielding the sword of rejection and organized boycotts are weapons that should be leveraged more often and in a more brutal manner than they normally are. I'd like to see things like that happen with regularity and frequency. The only way to reach their brains is by punching them in the wallet hard enough to draw blood. Well, it looks my email to UPS stirred up a bits of a hornet's nest. It is not resolved yet, but apparently a big shot in their Supply Chain Solutions department got ahold of it and copied a bunch of team leaders and supervisors with instructions to assist me and reply to all (with me on copy) with a response. If it is not resolved today I suspect it will be tomorrow or Monday. I'm less concerned now than I have been since Tuesday when I was given the erroneous notification of the amount due. Three of the supervisors copied on the email are out of office. One of them has an out-of-office reply with key names, emails and phone numbers I am going to hang onto for future reference. They might come in handy if I need to kick the hornet's nest again. 🤣

I suspect part of the issue is everyone I speak to has a heavy accent suggesting they are offshored contractors in India or the Philippines. Good chance they are merely call center grunts. Maybe as more pressing matters get resolved the Trump Administration can implement something to discourage or make it unaffordable for American companies to use foreign entities to service American consumers. I would love never having to speak to a foreigner that doesn't work for a company that I need help from. A high percentage of the time they are utterly worthless and cause more frustration than satisfaction. Because they are not employees of the companies they represent they often have no skin in the game and don't genuinely care about the customers looking for help.

So, the block is loaded on the truck for delivery but the amount due has not been corrected. No response from the past email. Spoke to another person again this morning. Now I am given a similar email with a "T" added. AKNENTYRVW at UPS dot com. Everyone I can speak to identifies the error. Nobody I can speak to has the ability to correct their mistake. I forwarded the previous email to the new/different address given to me today. The billing department number for this issue is 866-493-7140 x5. You cannot escalate to a supervisor. Apparently nobody has a supervisor (yeah, right). I was told that if the driver arrives today and the amount has not been corrected to let the driver know that I am not rejecting the delivery but UPS cannot complete the delivery until they correct their mistake and ask the driver to bring it back when he has the correct amount due to collect on delivery. The new owner of the 9070 XT is happy.

A$$zeus is the retarded god of customer-screwing scams and schemes.

Yeah that proprietary connector ruins it as an option all by itself. So does the requirement for a BTF motherboard and having a case that supports BTF motherboards. The idea of paying an absurd price for something with those kinds of strings attached is a non-starter for me. It would also be harder to sell when you no longer want or need it.

After speaking with multiple people at UPS I ended up with a person in their billing department who had a very heavy Indian acccent that assisted me. He confirmed the calculation was entirely inaccurate and told me to email the UPS customs department the tracking number for correction at AKNENYRVW @ UPS dot COM. Because of his accent I confirmed the address three times using phoentic verification for each character (A as in apple, B as in boy, etc.). He confiirmed the error was internal and told me the tariff should be 20% of the $179.68 purchase price according to their table, which makes the grand total about $10 less than if I had purchased it from a US reseller like Titan Rig or ModMyMods. I am totally fine with paying that, just need it resolved so I can accept delivery. It looks like the decimal point was placed in the wrong position and is one digit too far to the right. I am waiting for a response to the email he told me to send. Edit 8/22: No response from the past email. Spoke to another person again this morning. Now I am given a similar email with a "T" added. AKNENTYRVW at UPS dot com.

Thank you. After I talk to UPS about correcting the mistake tomorrow I will share what I learn, whether it was a simple mistake or something else. There is no way the amount they are stating can be accurate. When I asked for a return and explained why the customer service rep spoke to their supervisor about it and they offered that instead of a return/refund and I took it. The reason I requested a return was the price drop and explained I could buy an exact replacement (from them) cheaper, not product dissatisfaction or malfunction. I do not believe it is their policy to do that. I have found the people at NewEgg are usually accommodating when I am polite, kind and respectful to them on the phone and explain what my concerns are.

The entry-level Solid is $1999.99. The Solid OC is the same price at Zotac Store that I paid NewEgg already. So probably not going to return it. https://www.zotacstore.com/us/graphics-cards/geforce-rtx-50-series/geforce-rtxtm-5090 but I have until 9/6 before the window closes. Given that the price has not gone lower within my return window I wouldn't feel returning it is the right thing to do. I do not feel I was wronged in any way and I did not get a product that has any quality issues. If the price of the GPU I purchased drops more than $50 during my return window I will contact NewEgg about either a return or in-store credit for the price difference like they did the last time this happened. I don't remember if it was the Arc A770 or 4090 Suprim that they gave me in-store credit for the difference in the form of a NewEgg gift card. NewEgg also has the standard Solid model for the same price as Zotac store. https://www.newegg.com/zotac-solid-zt-b50900d-10p-geforce-rtx-5090-32gb-graphics-card-triple-fans/p/N82E16814500597 Yeah, it was an instant WTF reaction, LOL. After I thought about it a few minutes and fired an email off to Aquatuning my logic kicked in and it seemed obvious that someone made a huge mistake. Even if a 100% tariff applied (and it does not) it would be less than half what they say is owed, which is like 260% of the purchase price, on top of the purchase price. I am contacting UPS tomorrow morning. If what I am reading online is accurate there should be no duty or tariff on a purchase from an EU country if it is an online consumer retail purchase under $800 or $2500. (I see both numbers and do not know how to interpret the difference, but either way I may owe zero.) It looks like a tariff, if one even applies, would be 15% of the sale price, at most. The second person I spoke to at UPS confirmed that Aquatuning declared the correct $179.68 retail value on the customs forms.

It appear someone grossly miscalculated the import duty owed for the Alphacool CORE 5090 block. There is no way the amount UPS says I owe is accurate. Based on my understanding of the import duty from Germany it should be something less than $50, which is totally fine and I was expecting to pay something similar, but not anything remotely close to what they are stating. I am going to have to work this out before accepting delivery on Friday when scheduled. I have reached out to Aquatuning. Edit 1: I contacted UPS and the person I spoke with confirmed that it appears the import duty was incorrectly calculated based on the purchase value reported to US Customs by Aquatuning. They advised that only Aquatuning can correct the mistake and told me to have them contact UPS international at 800-782-7892 to get it corrected. The purchase price was $179.68. They must have had the decimal point in the wrong position when they filled out the customs forms. Edit 2: I received a call back from someone else at UPS. They have the declaration documents from Aquatuning and the amount reported at $179.68 USD is correct. The person told me that it appears they made a mistake in calculating the duty and he provided a number for me to call tomorrow to speak to someone about correcting the errant duty calculation. (That department was closed for the day.) In case anyone needs it that number is 866-493-7140 option 5 between 8AM-5PM EST.

Forum seems very sluggish and unresponsive right now. It was fine earlier. So sluggish, in fact, that my 2FA code was expiring while trying to log in because it was taking so long to process. It took 3 attempts.

This is type of decisive action is totally awesome in every way and should become a routine operation. What bothers me is there are certain people that are against it. Hard to believe that it is even true that there could be. Keep up the good work... there is still more trash to take out. This is pretty cool, too... 500+ pieces of garbage gone forever.