ggtks

  • Nov 23, 2021
  • Joined Jun 26, 2014
  • In Shipping from abroad (share your experience)
    zizo99 wrote
    ggtks wrote
    zizo99 wroteOver the past few months, I have used Aramex (ShopAndShip) quite a bit. I find them to be the best and cheapest option available, and their rates remain very affordable.
    What are the shipping and customs/VAT rates nowadays? I may try them for the first time in the near future
    Here is the invoice I received for an item last week

    https://imgur.com/a/Du7gVyX

    So when they say inflation charges for 14 USD, is that based on the declared value on the packaging? How did they come up with that 50,000 number?

    Because that's all on top of the shipping fees. Granted it's all in liras, but still.
    HzSamer wroteShop&Ship offer on Flex plan

    Use promo code Lebanon78 to get FLEX for USD 4.6 instead of USD 21.

    This offer is only valid on 22nd November 2021.

    https://i.ibb.co/4RdDG6r/Untitled.png

    Code no longer works, FWIW. I'm not a Facebook user, so it's no surprise I didn't see it. An email would've been nice.
  • In Shipping from abroad (share your experience)
    zizo99 wroteOver the past few months, I have used Aramex (ShopAndShip) quite a bit. I find them to be the best and cheapest option available, and their rates remain very affordable.
    What are the shipping and customs/VAT rates nowadays? I may try them for the first time in the near future
  • In Shipping from abroad (share your experience)
    ggtks wroteI have a handful of packages from Ali coming to Leb (relatives abroad are a precious help), will share statistics on how long things are taking. Will also note things like "extra" fees or whatever. I've heard rumors of these things lately.

    Libanpost has been a class act for years in my experience with the occasional customs hiccup but with the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if that was no longer the case now. I'm seeing a lot of people mention the tracking numbers not showing up in LiPos's system, honestly I've always used parcel tracking services to scan multiple couriers and give me the full timeline. YMMV depending on shipping provider obviously.

    What's interesting is that there are packages from China that are getting to Lebanon within less than two weeks. This was never the case for me in the past. The worst one is the package that spent 10 days in transit with twice that time in customs.


    Also, ShopAndShip fees at a 6000 rate sounds like highway robbery. Maybe it's time to make an account?
    ggtks wrote
    xazbrat wrote
    NuclearVision wroteanybody received anything recently?
    Got a package from Fedex this morning--I don't hold much faith in Libanpost.

    The courriers (Fedex, Aramex, etc) are still running, Libanpost is functional but slower than ever. Still haven’t recieved anything, according to their customer service there’s a very large number of packages being sorted (especially in my area). I presume they’re understaffed and underfunded, as well as suffering from the current crises, so I do expect them to be slow.

    Might have to sign up to Aramex, but truthfully I feel guilty ordering stuff online in this situation, so no clue if I’ll be using it.

    Signed up for Aramex about a month ago, may start using it soon. I am worried about getting shafted by customs, but it is what it is.

    I never used Aliexpress as much as I did this year, I had a lot of small items I needed for one of my jobs and there was zero supply in Lebanon for it. Thankfully I have the means to get these this way, which is something I am grateful for.

    As for my many packages, here are some statistics as promised:

    (used an old school BBCode table generator but it looks like LG doesn't support that.. Oh well)
    Disclaimer: This is just for information, none of my figures should be taken as reference or gospel, this is just anecdotal.
    All items were ordered between March and August of 2021.
    I've anonymized some of the info as well.
    I added the middle ranges in a non-statistical way, just by ear, because I'd say some 20% of packages are outliers in some category.

    Cainiao Standard Shipping for Special Goods: Mostly smaller items
    • n = 5.
    • China Transit: 2-6 Days
    • Overseas shipping: 8-9 Days
    • Customs: 10-20 Days
    • Libanpost: 35-40 Days
    Cainiao Super Economy for Special Goods: Mostly smaller items
    • n <10.
    • China Transit: 2-4 Days
    • Overseas shipping: 8-11 Days
    • Customs: 52-54 Days
    • Libanpost: 2 Days
    Cainiao Super Economy Global: Still mostly smaller items. That's just what I get from Ali anyways.
    • n = 10.
    • China Transit: 4-5 Days
    • Overseas shipping: 22-24 Days
    • Customs: 40-70 Days
    • Libanpost: 2-11 Days
    China Post Registered Air Mail: Bigger, heavier items
    • n <5.
    • China Transit: 3-4 Days
    • Overseas shipping: 8-22 Days
    • Customs: 8-39 Days
    • Libanpost: 2 Days
    Totals:
    • n <30.
    • Average total days from ship date to received date: 76.6, SD 22.6
    • Average China Transit: 9.2, SD 15.1
    • Average Overseas Transit: 25.1, SD 18.9
    • Average Days in Customs: 41.5, SD 20.3
    • Average Lebanon Transit (Libanpost): 10.0, SD 20.0

    There are also small packages sent through other carriers but those aren't enough to draw any conclusions from.
    I had one China Post Regular Air Mail outlier that spent 100 days bouncing around China until it returned to the seller. I know the seller from previous sales (they sell items for a very specific hobby), so I immediately contacted them. They gave me the option of a refund or sending again, I went for sending again. It went through 4px and it was a breeze.

    YMMV as always. My items were mostly small, cheap (~$7.9, SD $7.2) items, with one exception. I did not pay any extra fees.


    TLDR: The mail system is still functional, slow but functional. Customs is slower than ever, especially with smaller packages. LibanPost will sit on your packages for a while if they are small, and then send them to you asynchronously regardless of how long customs takes. Patience is more important than ever. All the Libanpost staff I had to deal with were helpful and friendly.

    I hope this helps.
    Best of luck with your shipping endeavors!
  • In Using solar and generator power together
    nuclearcat wroteI have such, designed by Lebanese guy, but it is pricey.
    It is DC rectifier from mains feeding MPPT, and solar MPPT feeding batteries, and from batteries it goes to inverter.
    He designed control system that adjust MPPT such way, that it draws max from solar, and remaining topple from rectifier.
    He is present on https://t.me/AlternativeEnergy_Lebanon and his telegram id is @ringzofzaturn

    Running it DC through the MPPT circuit is the only thing I haven't thought of. I'm not sure if this is the most brilliant thing I've ever seen or a house fire waiting to happen.

    I'll send him a message depending on what I end up installing here.

    I don't think the AC charger is such a crazy idea just because that's how non-hybrid inverters work, you have multiple sources intersecting at the DC line connected to the battery, where even the solar module and the inverter are separate.
    HzSamer wrotewow man, I read all of it once and I couldn't know what you want

    Can you shorten what you need in two, three lines? It is not clear
    I wrote it in a rush to be fair. The concept is this: Can I add an extra AC charger to the batteries of a hybrid PV solar setup.
  • In Using solar and generator power together
    Hey guys,

    I know this is the forum for more computery hardware but I figured if there was any place to ask it had to be LebGeeks. Googling hasn't been especially helpful, I only find tangentially related answers. Probably because electricity in Lebanon is actually unique, unlike other things.

    I'm just gonna copy paste my post from /r/solar, which has no responses yet.

    On /r/solar I wrote Preface for why I have weird needs: I live in Lebanon. We get a few hours of “true” grid power per day. We also get a few hours of power from the local generator mafia (I really can’t go into detail, there’s a ton of info online). This has always been enough but the country has been going through an economic freefall so the hours are limited.

    I also have limited roof space as this is an apartment. I did not purchase a system yet as almost all the local sellers are out of stock (because everyone that can afford it is adding solar now).

    If there was only one source of “grid” power it wouldn’t be an issue, but the true grid is unreliable and has sporadic hours. It is however cheap and I can draw 30A out of it. This is what I’m routing through the hybrid inverter, so I can charge batteries with the cheap power in the winter and at night.

    The generator power is a can of worms though. It’s expensive, but has slightly more predictable hours. It’s limited at a pitiful 5A though. Drawing any more means you have to run down several flights of stairs and flip a breaker across the street. This is my childhood home and I’ve done this diligently for over two decades anywhere between five and twenty times a day. Fun!

    Since everyone in Lebanon has two “grids”, I expected all the solar companies to have elegant solutions for this problem. Some kind of priority system or some kind of threshold-driven priority PLC thing that switches intelligently to save as much battery as possible for the nights. No avail though. Their “solution” is to keep the in-home generator breaker off and use it only as a manual backup. I instead want to use it as an automatic supplement:

    Does some kind of load distribution electrical fixture exist that would let me use a trickle of generator power during the generator hours, while still pulling the rest from the inverter? It would need to pull all the power from the inverter when the generator is offline. A selectable current limiter would be nice as well, as I might need to pull 5A in the winter but just 1A (or none) in the summer. I’m not worried about the true grid, that’s routed through the inverter and will be taken care of over there. I know phase things are an issue as well and honestly don’t know what to do with respect to that.

    You might suggest routing the generator through the inverter and using a simple priority contactor to switch to the true grid when it comes, but most inverters I’ve seen have a minimum grid charge circuit current of 5A, which would just trip my breaker since I have other things in my house.

    I’ve tried searching for a solution online but I can’t seem to find the device that does the load sharing. Hybrid inverters have one built-in, with digital current limit selection, so the device does exist. I just need to find its name.

    Any advice?

    EDIT: In case it wasn’t clear, it’s to get more power in the winter and at night. The generator service is there and I want to be able to use it to supplement my system enough for it to be completely self-sufficient when both grids are offline, especially in the winter/at night.

    EDIT 2: I’ve also considered keeping the generator like disconnected from the house and just wired to a dedicated charger that goes straight to the batteries, efficiency losses be damned. But given that this is a hybrid inverter, I’m worried it would freak out and think the batteries caught fire from the sudden battery voltage fluctuations. Or worse, that the inverter could be drawing enough power from the batteries while the charger was powered that it could damage the charger, batteries, inverter, or any permutation of the three.
  • In Shipping from abroad (share your experience)
    xazbrat wrote
    NuclearVision wroteanybody received anything recently?
    Got a package from Fedex this morning--I don't hold much faith in Libanpost.

    The courriers (Fedex, Aramex, etc) are still running, Libanpost is functional but slower than ever. Still haven’t recieved anything, according to their customer service there’s a very large number of packages being sorted (especially in my area). I presume they’re understaffed and underfunded, as well as suffering from the current crises, so I do expect them to be slow.

    Might have to sign up to Aramex, but truthfully I feel guilty ordering stuff online in this situation, so no clue if I’ll be using it.
  • In Shipping from abroad (share your experience)
    I have a handful of packages from Ali coming to Leb (relatives abroad are a precious help), will share statistics on how long things are taking. Will also note things like "extra" fees or whatever. I've heard rumors of these things lately.

    Libanpost has been a class act for years in my experience with the occasional customs hiccup but with the way things are going I wouldn't be surprised if that was no longer the case now. I'm seeing a lot of people mention the tracking numbers not showing up in LiPos's system, honestly I've always used parcel tracking services to scan multiple couriers and give me the full timeline. YMMV depending on shipping provider obviously.

    What's interesting is that there are packages from China that are getting to Lebanon within less than two weeks. This was never the case for me in the past. The worst one is the package that spent 10 days in transit with twice that time in customs.


    Also, ShopAndShip fees at a 6000 rate sounds like highway robbery. Maybe it's time to make an account?
  • In DSL issue when elevator is working
    I've been looking into this because fiber deployment stopped literal meters away from my house. Since they can't start until [political situation stabilizes] because the Ministry is in charge of approving more deployment, I want to improve my DSL connection, which has been deteriorating. I used to get a very reliable 200kB/s before, and for the past few months the speed has been closer to 50kB/s during "good" hours. I work and study online so I really need every bit of bandwidth I can get.

    Called the ISP and after enough bickering they sent me a technician. Turns out my Ogero box was getting 4mb and none of it was reaching my floor. The wiring in my building is very bad (I don't need to explain on this forum ha), so I'm assuming there's some new interference from the electrical wiring and the elevator, pumps, and so on in the electrical room.


    Thinking of either 1. pulling a new cat5/6 cable through the building to replace the old cable, which should be better shielded and in better condition, or 2. just deploying a cat 5/6 cable from outside into the apartment. This will need some extra rigging to get the cable to the router. I'll also have to move the landline (and I'll have a ton of useless phone plugs) but it's worth it. There are power lines running along both options though, so I guess I'll still have synchronization hiccups when the power switches, but 50kB->theoretical 4mb is worth the effort.

    I hate that I have to do this while every other house on my street has been on fiber since July.
  • In Feedback for IDM
    I don't know what magical world you guys live in where speeds got better but I left the house for a few days (including the end of last month/beginning of this month) and being the top internet user at home I figured I won't get FUP'd but nope I'm down to 80 KBps (out of 256 in theory, out of maybe 200 in practice).


    And if you're wondering why I'm still "unlimited" that's because I was outside of the house when I thought I should submit my change plan request. I told my father to call them in my absence. Bastards told him to do it with their form online.

    He then thought I should do it since "I'm better with the form stuff".

    Now I can't change my plan for this month online, so I have to wait for September (this is why I told my father to call in the first place).



    Well that spiraled out of control... I just wanted to tell you guys that my speeds got worse than they were before instead of magically becoming stable.


    EDIT: 70 KB/s now
  • In Feedback for IDM
    TechXero wrote
    ggtks wroteOK OK According to IDM I downloaded 60 MB so far today. SIXTY FUCKING MEGABYTES:

    [image]

    Shouldn't be enough to get me down to 1/50th of my speed right?

    WRONG.

    [image]
    Dude, did you even bother reading this thread before bashing ? I am gonna say this for the last time, Speedtest is a SINGLE THREADED TEST and browser downloads are single threaded. IDM are kinda having issues with single threaded downloads.

    But if you use IDM the download manager and set it to 16 threads it will work full throttle. But if you refuse to use it, and only prefer Browser downloads it's your problem now. We gave you solution yet you ignore it.

    Yesterday I got 5.7gb and my speed didn't drop not one byte. That's proof ! In 3 days got 11gb!

    Just saying.

    I understand what you're talking about, but IIRC you can't set Outlook to use more than 1 thread.

    And when your work requires you to send and receive a disturbingly large amount of emails (with massive PDFs) using a download manager won't change shit.

    Surprisingly Origin (of all services, I know) downloads at really high speeds even when I'm heavily throttled, si I'm pretty sure that's multi-threaded.
  • In Feedback for IDM
    OK OK According to IDM I downloaded 60 MB so far today. SIXTY FUCKING MEGABYTES:



    Shouldn't be enough to get me down to 1/50th of my speed right?

    WRONG.

  • In Feedback for IDM
    I feel like IDM are really fucking with my speeds right now.

    Speedtest.net gives a good 180 KB/s but try any other site and you're left with:

    6.9 KB/s - 241 KB out of 64.1 MB, 3 hours left

    (that's from next to my Chrome downloads)

    I would have uploaded a screenshot but the only image host that DID open told me my upload speed is too slow to upload them an image.


    So uh, yeah. Fuck IDM.
  • In Feedback for IDM
    anthonyf96 wrotesame here got FUP second time this month with 0.9to1.2GB per day which is totally unreasonable. Either IDM are stealing our money or they are idiots. No other explantion. I AM PAYING 50$ per month for this...... while others pay 19$ for 45gb which is unreachable by unlimited plans since they are applying FUP on us after crossing 1 gB per day. This means that i cant get pas 35gb per month which means that the 50$ that i am paying are not offering me my rights and i m getting robbed. GREAT JOB IDM. YOU CAN'T GET WORSE.
    Who shld i call from IDM to explain that their fair policy lacks logic? (hay ser2a 3al makchouf)

    Yeah it seems like whoever put these plans in order has no idea how computers work. I guarantee you they probably use floppies.
  • In Feedback for IDM
    I should be at 256 KB/s but I got FUP'd for downloading less than a gig today.

    Shitty Speeds

    Image is self-explanatory.
  • In Hey guys, I'm new here
    I didn't know that there was a Lebanese Geeks forum, but as soon as I discovered this place I signed up.

    Not much I can say for introductions.

    I'm also /u/gogetenks123 on Reddit
  • In Feedback for IDM
    sailor wroteguys i have Technicolor TG582n
    it doesnt connect automatic to dsl so each time i reboot or turn it on i have to login and hit connect manual
    any idea?

    This is the wrong place for your question (probably) but I'll tell you this: The shitty TG582n IDM made me buy stopped working suddenly. I opened it up and it looked like some components got burnt. I'm using the old Thomson ST585 they made me use in 2009 and it's better than the Technicolor.

    Mess around in the settings until you find something along the lines of "log in automatically"
  • In Feedback for IDM
    andrew55 wroteHonestly I prefer Sodetel's approach to the things. Plus they don't have unlimited plans or FUP...
    What is their approach? I hear mixed reviews from Sodetel.
  • In Feedback for IDM
    aliessayli2 wrote@ggtks it's obvious by now and this happened to everyone on Unlimited plan , switch to limited plan next month and deal with it this month there's nothing you can do

    I plan on doing just that. I think I'll also replace the ol' Thomson router IDM makes you pay 50$ for with something that has a bit more control.
  • In Feedback for IDM
    Hello guys (this is my first post here, I actually signed up just for this thread),

    Before the upgrade I was paying 50$ per month to IDM for 2 Mb/s and a total bandwidth limit of 20 GB (traffic up and down) and free bandwidth from 11 PM to 7 AM.

    My speed topped around 100 kB/s which I didn't inquire about with IDM.
    I downloaded for free between 11 PM and 7 AM, at the same ~100 KB/s speed. I got down to about 2.2 GB per night, which was great.
    This netted me about 70 GB free per month, plus the regular 20 GB (effectively less since maybe 1/6th of the 20 is upload).
    90 GB of content per month for 50$, pre upgrade.


    As soon as the "upgrade" rolled around, I inquired about my speed and haggled it to maybe 200 KB/s, which is closer to 2 Mb/s (which is 256 KB/s). Now, I don't travel much, so 200 KB/s sounds like heaven to me.

    The "upgrade" changed my plan to Unlimited with an FUP.

    I used about 10 GB of bandwidth so far, and IDM killed my speed. Brought it down to a lovely 25 KB/s.

    Now, according to the FUP, IDM plays with your speed when you use more than three times the bandwidth of the average subscriber to the plan you're using. This means the average subscriber to my plan used ~3.3 gigs of bandwidth in these 8 days, so it was about 0.415 GB per day. So that nets me ~12.5 gigs a month at best.

    So by going "unlimited" I lost 77.5 GB of my data per month.

    But wait, there's more!

    IDM offers a 60 gig plan with 6Mb speed for 43$ a month.

    So I'm getting a third of the speed and a fifth of the data I can get for less money.

    But wait, there's even more!

    Still, if I take the above mentioned plan, the unlimited hours at night (11 to 7) are still under an FUP.

    /rant

    EDIT: Fixed one of the mentioned plan speeds form 8Mb to 6Mb