Sent for reprint without asking and now no one responds!

I received a damaged porcelain vase. I complained with pictures.
Without asking if I want reprint or refund, it was sent for reprint. Though the reprint is free of cost, I will have to pay customs duty on it, which is 30% here(I would rather order something else with that money, since I am testing porcelain at the same time).
Also, the first order was a gift. And now the reprint is going to take another month before it reaches me.
Why does nobody even bothers to ask what we want before assuming what they are doing will make us happy?
It was a quick action and I appreciate that. But was it what I wanted?

Porcelain is still a pilot programme, meaning you pay them for experimenting with one of your models rather than something they come up with themselves, and get to keep whatever result. Quoting from the Materials page for porcelain:
(You may still be able to cancel the reprint to at least avoid the additional customs fees if it is not actually in production - email service for that)

It was damaged in transit by UPS. Shapeways did excellent job in making it, I was quite happy with the quality of glaze.
They sent me an email saying they have sent it for reprint. I asked not to. but before anybody from shapeways responded, it was sent to production. Now I can't cancel it as well!
I don't mean to harass shapeways, but I don't want to pay (customs fees) for something I don't want anymore. I was hoping they will come up with a solution keeping me in loop, even if it was a refund after deducting the making and shipping charges...

Maybe they can keep the reprint for internal or promotional use rather than sending it to you, or find some other arrangement once they know of the customs fee issue.

If it's clearly marked as a free replacement, there really shouldn't be any duties or taxes payable.

the only reprint I've ever had done was shipped at $0 value.

Steve Hunter

@Christel, thanks a lot for your help!
@Steve, I am not sure, as it has never happened before. But the picture is completely different if I tell you that the shipping address is India . 'Authorities' here are extremely greedy and irresponsible at the same time :-( I have big plans for shapeways' porcelain, something I want to do here in India, but this whole customs thing is killing me right now.

When Shapeways sends a replacement order to me here in Canada, they mark the value as zero (technically Canada Post reads that as 1$, since it's the minimum, but at any rate anything under $20 is tax-free to import). What will happen to you depends on India's import rules, which I don't know

In regards to refund vs reprint, one lesson I've learned is that unless you explicitly ask for a refund in your first email to support, they'll go ahead and do a reprint. It works for me, because that's usually what I want anyway, but I can definitely see how it would be annoying not to be asked what you want.