Customs problem Germany with DIY parts

Today I was happy to pick up my two torque motors by from the German customs office. Unfortunately they won’t hand them out to me and send them back because of the following reasons:

  1. no CE conformity is given and therefore no label.
  2. No company/brand/importer name is printed onto the motor
  3. No German manual with usage and security instructions is included

Any advice from the German guys around here? On Monday I will get the technical report from the Bundednetzagentur. Hopefully there is the contact of the test engineer on there…

1 Like

1 is a requirement. DIY should not be selling those motors on the EU market if they can’t prove that their electronics components are CE certified.

Contact their support.

‘‘The European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC): Based in the European Union (EU), it writes standards to develop harmonized electrical standards for the European community. To sell motors in the EU, a manufacturer must comply with EU standards for the CE mark.’’

1 Like

It is not DIY’s fault as they clearly don’t target the EU market but rather the buyer imports this stuff on his own risk. The buyer is the one who needs to know the rules and laws. That said I have never heard of motors being a problem - why would you need a manual for a motor? It’s a part and not an entire product. Sounds to me the officer did not know what he was doing and what he was dealing with :confused:

@chritx that sucks and I hope you can sort it out quickly

they don’t? I think they target the entire world :wink: Kind of strange that the customer has to know about a law targeted at sellers though.

I bought a Racerstar motor from banggood and had no problems at the customs office without german manual and ce trade. Don’t know maybe they just had a bad day ? Did u say it was a motor for electric skateboards ?

No they don’t - a seller only needs to know the laws in his country. The buyer is the importer in this case and needs to make sure he knows what the laws are in his country. You can’t make a seller know every law for every country there is. It is different for a big company like Apple that sells outside the US but has subsidiaries in the other country that act as the importer and then sell stuff locally.

In this case though I believe they just did not know what the things are and thought it needed certification.

I bought a motor and other parts from diy and ordered them to hamburg. Also had to go to the customs office and pay the import tax but then they just gave it to me. No further issues …

You should have told DIYes to declare it as prototype and no value.

In this case though I believe they just did not know what the things are and thought it needed certification.

Well as mentioned earlier, they just looked for the CE-Label. Since there was none, they sent the motor to the “Bundesnetzagentur.” This is a federal bureau which takes care of product safety but also manages networking stuff like handing out carrier frequencies to radio stations etc… I assume the know the law and technical apects.

1 Like

Good Point…

A motor does not need to be sent to the Netzagentur (at least AFAIK) which is why I suspect them not knowing what they are dealing with.

@Zimbombe I told them exactly what is is, and even that it is no final product, rather an engineering lab testing object … didn’t help unfortunately … that’s why I can’t wait till monday to have a look at the test report …

@Maxid But they replied to them with a test report and stated the initial mentioned three points… so somehow …

Well you are the first one here with a problem like this - looking forward to hearing how it went on Monday.

For about two years i have the same problems, i have order the Carvon 2.0 from USA. Then i must go to custom office and after long discussion i have became the motors. But i say there was for a Skateboard ant it was working with 12V only. After then i have making some information and as answer i became, that al thing what have a cable mounted so you have problems when it was no CE label on it. After then i have order one Tablet from china, in the custom office he say me, that i can have the tablet but the charge and the cable for the car and al cables must destroyed because he don´t have CE. In last time have many People order from China electric Parts without CE and same supplier have making a mistake and sending the wrong parts out that´s was for the US market with 110 Volt. And the same problematic was that witch product comes from USA and have cables mounted and no CE, you don’t can import to Germany. In the USA was 110V. The same problematic was with al electronic parts to sending to the USA. Al electronic parts must have a code number on it, that you can imported in the USA. You can see the number under esk8, without this E number i don’t can sending the controller to the USA an another countries in the World. Thats the same by the Antispark. So we have this Number on our Antispark and of our Vesc and esk8 1.1 controller. Regards Attila

I see, maybe thats why. I told them its for Rc Cars and had no problems.