Disclaimer: Framework team has time and again warned against shipping to countries they don’t officially support for warranty and other reasons. Keep that in mind before deciding to follow anything in this post.
I could no longer wait for Framework to come to Australia so I had one shipped via a package forwarder. I thought I detail out my experience, the cost and some other tips and notes for in case it’s helpful to some of you.
As luck had it, a mere one hour after my purchase of the 1st Gen Framework, the 2nd Gen was announced! The awesome folks at Framework offered me two options: a discount or a total refund. I went with the discount as I didn’t want to further wait for a month or two.
The spec I ordered:
- 11th Gen Intel i7-1165G7 (mid range)
- No RAM, No SSD, No power brick, No WiFi
- Expansion cards: 4 USB-C, 3 USB-A, 2 MicroSD, 1 HDMI
This cost a total of $1674 AUD and $1435 AUD after the discount.
The reason I didn’t order any of the internal components was to save on import fees. Australia subjects all imports to 15% fees unless the overseas merchant has already charged the purchaser the GST (VAT) fee. I did ensure that a compatible RAM module and SSD stick was available in Australia before leaving them out of the order.
I used shipito to forward my laptop. I’ve used them a dozen times over the past decade and they’ve been headache free to date. It cost $165 AUD via DHL Express with delivery and damage insurance.
It took a few days to arrive to Australia but then spent a good full week at the customs for some reason. I finally got the import fee bill from DHL to the tune of $290 AUD. That’s about $40 AUD more than what I expected — import duty is 5% of the AUD value and GST is 10%, for total of 15% of $1674 AUD = $251 AUD. For the attentive among you, I did forget to declare the discounted price so I ended up paying more import fee than I needed to.
Once I had the laptop in hand, I put the order for two 32GB Cruicial sticks (CT32G4SFD832A) for a total of 64GB and $400 AUD. I also ordered a 2TB WD BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD on Amazon for a surprisingly low price of $384 AUD — I haven’t received this yet and I won’t be surprised if it’s the wrong size, but if not, then it’s a good $150 AUD cheaper than anywhere else.
I have an existing Intel AX210 WiFi+Bluetooth card and plenty of USB-C chargers and cables so no cost there.
In total, my setup cost me: $1435 + $165 + $290 + $400 + $400 = $2690 AUD.
Not terrible. I will make an update when the SSD arrives as well as when I migrate my Archlinux to Framework.
