Battery Upgrade reviews

This site seemed to be an Italian business. I live in Italy and prefer when possible to buy products locally for speed of delivery (Italy, Austria, Germany, even from the UK is fast). I required batteries for my Sony HDR-FX1E and Canon 5D plus a charger for the Sony. I found them here and the prices looked great, the fact they may look a little different did not bother me. I wanted to pay with bank transfer rather than by credit card (my first mistake) and in doing so I realised the company were not in fact Italian but Dutch. However, I have bought products from Holland before and often European companies make deliveries directly from warehouses there. So I went ahead.
I needed the batteries ASAP as I had a location shoot coming up and as the site stated up to one week for delivery left me with some margin if it was a bit late. However that was 26 September and I collected them from the post office 10 Nov 2011.
I am charging the batteries as I write so I cannot tell you if they charge fully or not (watch this space). I will say that the 'OutGreen universal AC and Car adapter / charger' is of low quality and very fiddly to use especially with the larger heavy batteries and getting good contact can be intermittent.
When I asked about where my products were they told me that I should wait up to two months and blamed it on the Italian customs taking time over processing the parcel/s. Admittedly Italy is notorious for it's protracted and inefficient bureaucracy, however if they know that delays can be bad perhaps they should NOT say one week delivery on their website.
It was during this correspondence that I realised that the product was not coming from Holland but Hong Kong. On their website you can find this if you look hard enough and they cover themselves by hiding it in the small print.
I felt I was duped, not scammed, into believing the product was stocked in Europe, they also say delivery is free and direct shipment from the manufacturers saves money. It saves THEM money. They can reduce their prices because their costs are lower, but DO NOT take the prices as read. You need to add the cost of import duty for the country destination even though they are European and you paid them from within Europe, in my case 34.74 or 29% of the value.
In summary: I would say to BatteryUpgrade.com to change their website to be less misleading, import the products and deal with customs themselves (keeping stock of the the most popular products at least for European customers) and reflect this in the prices.
If you are looking to buy from them, do not do so if the order is urgent, find out what the import duty will be, and try asking them to import it first then deliver to you.
I for one will not use them again. I prefer transparent business models who put your consumer rights first.
By the way if you are not happy with the products you can return them but you will have to pay the postage and say bye bye to the import duty.