Zactoman

Zactomodels is now open again and it's good to be back! During our move last year I injured my right shoulder. After months of living with it, I finally had it checked. I was diagnosed with a torn rotator cuff, but it turned out to be really bad bursitis with bone spurs. The MRI was excruciating because I had to hold my neck cranked to the side. A week later my neck was aching, my left arm began falling asleep and my left thumb tip was completely numb. I went almost 2 months like that before I found a chiropractor that was able to help. I was almost healed but kept re-injuring myself doing small tasks. Spending almost two weeks in bed with COVID was just what my body needed to recover. Another couple of weeks to take care of things and now I'm ready to go! My apologies to those who have had emails go unanswered. I've done my best to reply to anything related to orders that were placed, but skipped almost everything else... No new products for a while. While the casting area is temporarily set up (still in the dining room and not the garage), my office/modeling room is in-progress. The new home is quite a drive from the Post Office, so orders will be shipping on Mondays and Fridays only. UK is still blocked from purchasing due to VAT regulations. Does anybody know of any small business that has successfully signed up for VAT or found a way around this? EU can order but you'll have to pay your own VAT when your package arrives. Australia and New Zealand are both back after COVID restrictions. Russia and Ukraine are blocked from ordering due to the war. AIM-9X Sidewinder is in limbo until I can get more MV Lenses (or find a replacement). F-16 MCID (large mouth) intake will not be available until after the garage/shop is up and running and I re-engineer the mold. I will be doing a short run re-release of the Revell MiG-29 correction and combo sets in the near future. I'll be casting sets until the current molds wear out and then it's gone. Contact me if you are interested in reserving one. Su-27 and A-7 canopies are not available, but I do plan to re-release them early next year after moving my shop to my garage, even if the parts aren't "Perfect" (I've realized I was too much of a perfectionist when rejecting minor flaws). Chris

www.Zactomodels.com The store is now open for business! Thanks for all the well-wishes, but it didn't go as smoothly as planned (Do moves ever go as planned?) Readers Digest version can be found here: http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?/topic/318865-zactomodels-is-back/

I'm currently packing up the shop and moving in a couple of weeks. I'll do my best to get things up and running after the move, but anticipate setting up the new shop may also take a couple of weeks. I'm hoping to be back in business by September 1st or sooner. Contact me if you need something before then. I do have a few items in stock and will help if I can. My apologies for any email replies I may have missed during the past few weeks/months. It's been hectic... UK orders are still blocked due to their VAT regulations. I'm hoping to find a solution, at least for orders over $180, before re-opening. EU customers will need to pay VAT and any fees due on delivery. I do not intend to sign up with IOSS. Customers from any other countries that add taxes or fees will have to pay those taxes and fees on delivery. I have a hard enough time keeping track of my own taxes and don't need the extra headache...

Thank you for sharing another stunning build and for expanding my vocabulary.

Indeed it is. For a better pic, close-ups, alternate markings and some cool animation, this page is worth having a look at: https://peterfor.com/projects/Vg3Go8

Cats and models don't mix...

I miss the bars and clubs packed with cute college girls. Oh wait, that was 30+ years ago... I was locked in my basement casting parts long before this started so not much has changed for me. I do miss going out for those occasional dinner and a movie nights with the wife, but then I've taken up cooking and have had some wonderful dinners with her here at home.

In trying to keep it non-political, I found a good article about this as it relates to US businesses: https://esellercafe.com/how-a-new-vat-rule-from-brexit-now-impacts-every-us-seller-shipping-to-uk-customers/ My current plan for UK purchases: Under £135: a Zactomodels eBay store. eBay charges customer the VAT during purchase and eBay does the dirty work of paying VAT to HMRC. Over £135: The customer pays VAT upon receipt in the UK. A minimum purchase over £135 will be required on my website (once I get the coding worked out). Or customers can email me a list and I'll send a PayPal invoice. I am considering charging slightly higher prices on the eBay store to cover eBays high fees. You UK guys that want to make small orders might want to consider coordinating with one another and placing a larger order together to save a few bucks.

As mentioned, I don't know eBay. I'm not trying to skirt their rules or fees and wouldn't want to fake anything like shipping cost. If I were I wouldn't be asking about it on a public forum. I had hoped that maybe they allowed custom invoicing, like PayPal, to where a customer could request and receive an invoice and eBay would get their full cut on the sale. That or an ability to add additional unlisted items to the purchase of a listed item, again with eBay getting their full cut. I've avoided selling on eBay for 2 reasons: 1. Through the years I've heard and read lots of stories of idiots filing bogus claims and/or leaving fake bad feedback. I'm hoping this is overblown and not much of a problem. 2. I've been warned away by a few other vendors because of the high fees eBay charges, particularly if you have an eBay store. After some initial quick research it doesn't look all that terrible. With my new website coming online I was planning to look into starting an eBay store, but was only going to list a few items with the hope of reaching a wider audience that would ultimately shop at my website. With this UK thing and the EU coming in July, I'm thinking it might be best to just pull the trigger and list my full inventory. I'd like to do more research, but need to decide ASAP for my British homies. Looks like a few more sleepless nights ahead. I'm just hoping it's easier starting an eBay store than it is registering with HMRC... Thanks for all of the input, Chris

Sadly, I just did this. Now I've got the UK, one of my favorites, on a short list with several unsavory and third world countries. I am considering something similar and have questions to those who know eBay (I've never sold anything there...). If I were to start an eBay store and just list a few items, could I send an eBay invoice (I assume you can do invoices there?) to a wanna-be UK customer for any item in my catalog, even if it's not listed on eBay? Chris

Frustration bump. I only found out about this on Monday, Jan. 11th when Stamps.com emailed me a notification about it. I did a search and found this thread before creating a new one. What a mess!!! I just spent about 2 hours registering with HMRC, before giving up (they don't make it easy!). I got all the way to the payment "schemes" section before my brain shut down. I didn't even get to this part: Non UK residents must provide one piece of primary evidence which consists of a copy of government issued photo identification which can include: passport photo drivers licence national identity card You must also provide two additional pieces of evidence which can be copies of: a mortgage statement a lease/rental agreement a birth certificate a marriage or civil partnership certificate a decree absolute or decree of dissolution certificate an official document from an employer that contains your name, date of birth and Tax Identification Number Seriously??? This after they already got all of my business info and SSN? I skipped to the next section which was bank info. I only glanced at it before walking away but I gather that I needed to have a UK bank Account??? I don't know... When I returned the page had reset and when I logged back in they started me back at the very beginning. Have any of you successfully applied for this? Please email or PM me if you can help guide me through the process! Zactoman@Zactomodels.com In the mean time what to do? Block UK customers? What happens to the packages I already shipped this year not knowing about this? Will those customers be able to claim them if I haven't registered for the VAT? Will they be able to pay the VAT themselves and if not, what happens to the packages?

I found myself so distracted by the rivet work (in a great way!), that I had to take a second look to appreciate what a nice build this is otherwise. Bravo! Chris

We need an Su-57 to sit next to that 1/32 F-22 kit.

Thanks for all the nice feedback! Thanks for the suggestions that were messaged or posted here. I haven't had much time since launching to work on the website but have made few small changes thanks to those recommendations. As previously mentioned, it's a work-in-progress and I've still got a lot of work to do on it. This is the first website I've ever built (my old one was started by an old roommate for me and I just updated but never learned) and it was much harder than I'd anticipated. I looked at my options and decided to learn WordPress using online tutorials and lots of searches for answers, just to make a basic site. What is frustrating is that so many seemingly simple things are much more involved or in some cases not possible without actually learning to code (and I don't have time for that). I just now (temporarily) removed that line. When time permits I will add a page that lists all of my products with links to pdf instructions for each product. I had hoped to do that before launch but didn't find the time. Thanks for pointing it out to me. Mark and Tim, PMs sent. Thierry and Tom, thanks for the orders. Both shipped the following day. Notifications of orders received and orders shipped (including tracking info) are now automatically sent. If any of you don't receive those please let me know so I can investigate and fix the problem. Cheers Chris

Have a look at my new website!!! https://zactomodels.com A big thank you to the modelers whose pictures you'll see on my homepage. A huge thank you to Marcel and Miro who took multiple pictures of their kits until the lighting and pose of the images worked together so that I could merge them for the hero-pic. Thank you for tolerating my AMS! My old website was cluttered, crowded, not mobile friendly and way beyond obsolete. Not having a clue about building websites made this a real challenge. The site still needs a lot of work. I was mostly focused on making the homepage and store before going live. The "about us" page and "shipping details" are temporary and will be filled in when I get the time. The "privacy policy" and "terms and conditions" are copy/pasted standard legal mumbo-jumbo that nobody reads or cares about. I do plan to eventually add a customer build gallery and probably a few other pages for faqs, news, tutorials, etc. Just need more time... Please let me know what you think, if you find any problems or have any suggestions. Happy New Year!