I'm really hoping rx8pilot wins the next one, instead of yet another whiner who shouldn't have entered in the first place.
It sounds like Keysight are doing what they can, but it may not be under their control. Some countries may tax you on the fair market value of what comes into the country regardless of what you paid or didn't. Even Dave's dumpster find might incur taxes for the recipient.
I can only imagine that after all the moaning winners, Keysight is going to be reluctant to be as generous in the future.
Haha, yeah, that poor international corporation, I bet its feelings are hurt now!
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif.pagespeed.ce._hfWAz_QHO.gif)
Do you really think Keysight is giving away these scopes because they're feeling generous? They do it because it's free advertisement. If nothing else, it generates hits on their YouTube videos (which are ads, plain and simple). Otherwise they would have to purchase ads on YouTube, which everyone filters out or skips anyway. Try to get someone to watch a 5 minute ad. To reach this many people from their target audience, they would otherwise have to spend millions of $$$ in ads.
Now BTT, there's a lot of misinformation in this thread. I live in Germany and buy stuff from all over the world. Here's the deal: if you receive ANYTHING from outside the EU, you have to pay 19% import tax. This is the same 19% VAT that you'd pay in a store. The reason for this is that otherwise everyone would just buy stuff from foreign countries and circumvent the VAT.
There's also customs, but there are hardly tariffs on anything anymore. At least for electronics, there's no customs to be paid.
Essentially, anything that's bigger than a padded envelope will be held by customs. You have to prove to them how much the goods are worth, by providing a PayPal or credit card statement. If you can't prove the value, the customs officer will determine it himself, usually to your disadvantage. It also doesn't matter if it's a gift or free or whatever. You receive it, you pay the 19%. No way around that.
Now, the question is, why can't they send the prize from one of their distributors? I mean, they want you to BUY from the distributor. If you buy from overseas, they get pissed and deny you the warranty. If they don't want to ruin their little ad campaign, they'd be sending him the scope from a German distributor, because right now, the whole company is looking like a bunch of incompetent bureaucrats.