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RE: Customs and overseas shipping question - 11/13/2007 9:58:32 PM

DChammer

Posts: 59
Joined: 10/31/2006
From: DC
Status: offline

As beeble said above, if you do not follow the guidelines in the customs forms, you potentially are breaking the law somewhere.

I have been aware of a number of times where a person has had to pay additional tax on imported items from the US; Canada, UK, Belgium, France, and Australia come to mind.

Always make your customer aware they are responsible for any additional taxes applied by their country.

Some additional ways to lessen the intrusiveness to such packages
- Stick a birthday card in and write gift on the customs form.
- Send the invoice by email and do not stick in the box. The customs folks will look at the invoice description and price.
- Declare a lesser value of the item
- State the item is being returned
- Be more general in your terms regarding the description. Some countries have hard-ons for specific words such as "leather"
- Agree with Lucylastic that "theatrical or stage props" seems to works well for some reason.

With the fall of the dollar people from the EU are looking to buy from the US so you have the opportunity to do quite a bit of business with them and also develop them as customers.

(in reply to Lucylastic)

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RE: Customs and overseas shipping question - 11/14/2007 6:27:29 AM

VadFarkas

Posts: 923
Joined: 6/7/2007
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Thank you, I appreciate all the advice and feedback.
The shipping department (my wife) is making a label for Canada right now.
She decided to go back to the cheaper Priority Mail instead of Express Mail,
that seemed to work better. Now I have to go change all my web pages.

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RE: Customs and overseas shipping question - 11/14/2007 11:53:24 AM

Lucylastic

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Heyas Vad, I get a lot sent to me from suppliers via USPS priority and despite the hold at customs which is not their fault, the service is very good, fast and Canada Post brokers them and I think mostly their handling charges are very cheap, compared to the couriers. Just as an aside....with the Canadian dollar being strong right now, Canadians are buying ooodles of stuff from the US and it is slowing down the customs side of it so let your customer know that the mailing may take a few days more than usual.
Lucy

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RE: Customs and overseas shipping question - 11/15/2007 2:45:10 PM

essexfemmegirl

Posts: 17
Joined: 5/19/2006
From: UK
Status: offline

I can't think where I read this, but it was within the past three to six months that I did, and might be worth checking out - I think they've altered UK customs rules so that even items marked gift can be subject to customs charges now. I don't know if this is actually implemented, but is presumably because of the fact that people are trying to get round the customs charges! Sorry I couldn't be more detailed, I usually try to be, but I thought it might be worth looking into nonetheless :)

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RE: Customs and overseas shipping question - 11/16/2007 6:28:18 AM

VadFarkas

Posts: 923
Joined: 6/7/2007
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Thank you Ladies,
We use USPS exclusively. The last 2 shipments to Canada were marked 2 ways. One as merchandise and one as gift. The gift truly was a gift and free to a good customer. Both were declared as Stage Props this time. We haven't heard back from either one as of yet.
I also added a little disclaimer on my website and eBay listings mentioning possible Customs delays.

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Post #: 25