Originally Posted by anga

I am surprised and disappointed at the hostile responses.

Deepak is not evading tax, he is minimizing his tax payments. You seem to be unaware that Indians have the pleasure of paying a customs duty ranging from 40% to 50% of cost of (bike + shipping).

Deepak: As suggested, file a dispute with the payment processor and contact the German Embassy in India for alternatives. Leaving a negative feedback at Trusted Shops | seal of approval, seller rating and buyer protection for online shops may help.
Germany also has effective consumer forums and filing a dispute should help. Google.

Btw, tourists are out of luck with respect to sales tax. No refund.

Originally Posted by puma1552

OP did nothing wrong.

He did his due diligence, asked the right questions, and if the company - who is responsible for processing VAT refunds - gives him wrong information, they should stick to their word and own their mistake.

OP executed a transaction with a company and asked them the right questions, and that company should have been able to provide him the correct information, and failed to do so - on multiple occasions. The onus is on Canyon to provide correct information about purchases from Canyon, including tax implications for those purposes. VAT is nothing new, and they should have full understanding of this, being a European company.

It's not OP who should hold the bag because yet more idiots in the world can't do their god-damn job right, which is exactly what happened and exactly why OP is in this situation.

Canyon deserves to be put on blast for this. I'm sure they did absolutely nothing with the employees who told him wrong information, they are probably telling other people the same wrong crap. If I had a company, and we told someone the wrong thing that cost them $700, it wouldn't even for a second ever cross my mind to do anything other than process that refund immediately and own my own mistake.

Originally Posted by laternser

How could any company refund a tax paid to government? Refund implies it was already paid to the tax authorities.

Don't think they could pry money back out of the EU tax system on behalf of you.

Maybe tax payer could by filing the appropriate rebate forms. An accountant may be able to identify the obscure forms required.

20% VAT yipee! Never enough of someone else's money.
By the time you trace this back far more than half of the cost of the bike will have gone into Government coffers by a tax, fee, inspection charge, workers taxes, taxes on imported titanium, environmental fees, real-estate taxes, water taxes, dock taxes and fees, taxes on the tools required to manufacture it, negative interest on the companies bank balance, interest on capital investment, taxes on net, etc etc etc.

The only entity trying to lower the product cost in all of this is the manufacturer, so blame them.
They will be running on the smallest profit you ever saw ... that is why there are very few old bicycle manufacturers.

What Canyon really needs to do is apply for government subsidies and exemptions to lower the cost.
The do after all produce bicycles that lower emissions. Must be a subsidy.
That way they shift the cost to some other less worthy entity.