Shipping Overseas

I guess you weren't aware that once a package arrives in the Brasilian Post Office the first thing that happens is it is opened and the Postal employee decides if he/she would like to keep it for themselves.

If not there is a postal fee for the recipient when they go to pick it up.

The Post Office will not inform the addressee that there is a package waiting for them.

There is a regulation there where if a package is left over a specific amount of time it is "absorbed" by the post office to be sold for the postage due - and there is always postage due!

Need I go on?

I have learned that FedEx and UPS are much better.

Even though they are a bit more expensive at the start they are cheaper than paying postage on both ends.

However a first class letter, in my experience, many times will arrive as quickly there as here in the states.(this is including delivery and has no extra fee there)

They seem to be uninterested in first class or may be intimidated by our Postal Inspection Service.

This has all been learned from personal experience.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong here.

My Package is 16" wide, 10" deep and 12" tall and weighs 7 pounds.

When you say UPS will be cheaper,? What am I doing wrong then?

When shipping this package by the Postal Service it costs $45.00

But to ship it via UPS, the very exact same package and addreses would cost MORE that whats in the box is worth! $390.44

Or am I doing something wrong?

The packages that I sent were much lighter in weight and so much less expensive. As far as it being more expensive to send by standard post I mean that wI wound up paying here in the US and again (about double) in Brasil. Thus bringing the total cost of postage above the FEDEX rate. Sorry for any confusion.

It has been 9 years since I sent anything down there so I don't know the current rates.

Well I have to weigh in on overseas shipping by UPS.

I import materials from the US on a regular basis, and I will not deal with any company that insists on UPS - because they charge HUGE brokerage fees for crossing the border to Canada. Even though USPS is expensive, it is way cheaper to ship USPS express than any of the services offered by UPS.

Fedex is also expensive but not as bad. They tend to phone from the border to get payment for any customs charges on the spot, and you have to watch out they don't charge you twice for it.

I suspect that this varies from country to country, but the general POV I have developed is this:

- Choose a shipping method with a tracking number you can trace online. This is the bare minimum to ensure that you receive your goods, and is worth any extra charges. The tracking number is worth more than "insurance". It used to be that only express could be tracked online, but that service has now been extended to slower methods as well, at least in Canada.

- The faster the shipping method and the more you pay, the better your updates online will reflect the progress of the package towards its destination. They are not perfect but at least there is some information as to where the package is (or has disappeared).

- When it comes to shipping overseas, there is a changeover of tracking services, but the tracking is generally conserved.

- If you're shipping a package to a customer, there's nothing better than a tracking number to take their package anxiety off your hands and into the hands where it belongs. Well worth the price, to email the tracking number to your client as soon as the package ships. I have some suppliers who will only ship Express for this reason. The tracking is the best available, and that means the customer can see who has the package in hand, and if it's not on the way, where it is held up.

UPS won't honor their insurance on anything they consider unique, so you are on you own with art & antiques

FedEx is much better

Good point VisiGuest.

I've been exporting and importing for 20 years or so using Fedex, and have never had any problems like this. The only times I've had a problem is when my clients specify a shipping company who (as described in one of these posts) bundle a number of shipments together (and forget to include my pro-forma invoice). It sounds like you had bad luck, but then again I've never used the USPS as my carrier.

I'll bet you that if you are using Fedex for customs clearance I could audit their declarations and find enough errors that if all the allowable fines were applied you are out of business faster than you could say "it just had to get there".

Perhaps so. Thats why I always check the box that says all duties and taxes will be paid by the recipient. My clients are fine with that.

Duties and taxes are only a minor consideration in these days of free trade. The thing importers should worry about is the fine and penalties applicable for getting a tariff (or anything else) wrong on an import declaration. Just to choose a random example if we declare that an imported pump is a "reciprocating positive displacement pump" (8413.50.00) duty free and it turns out that the pump was actually a "rotary positive displacement pump, (8413.60.00) also duty free. We have made a false declaration and that is subject to a fine. Now this will only be discovered during a customs audit and those are only conducted about every four years. Assume that the client has had an import of these pumps once a week for the four years. 52 x 4 = 208 imports. 208 x $300.00 fine = $62,400.00. Now that fine is going to put a crimp into the client's bottom line. If the error in tariff has also caused you to avoid getting a proper permit or notifying some other government agency there will be an additional fine. It is really a fun game. I work with the tariff book and it is supposed to have 1 and only 1 correct number for everything in the world. If you know the rules well, (GIRs, General Rules of Interpretation) you can classify anything. But you also have to know the terms used in all the various industries and the basics of engineering, physics, chemistry etc. It helps if you know that a "thrust washer" is not what customs defines as a washer (7318) but it is usually a "plain shaft bearing" (8483).

So my job is to know something about everything and/or be able to learn it quickly. (Love my job BTW) Finding this web site was a god-send for dealing with the machinery chapters of the tariff. I use similar sites for textiles, leathers and anything else I can find.

I just wanted to point out in my posts here that international shipping involves a bit more than getting the address correct on the box. It can be made very simple when you do your homework before sending something and you hire a professional to deal with the myriad of regulations involved. I can provide tariff advice for any country in the world, not just my own.

Anybody else see the news article where the woman was stopped at the U.S./Can border because she had a "Kinder Egg" in her car.

Next time we can discuss what constitutes country of origin and/or how to calculate value for duty.

You are right, and I shouldn't be so flippant about this. Most of the things I ship are low-tech but highly specialized test equipment and test objects. When I scroll though the harmonized code lists my products rarely appear explicitly. Trying to figure which 'other' category is the best fit is guesswork. I might easily guess differently than a customs agent. But somehow in 20+ years of doing this I haven't come to grief, and fedex has handled most of it. But seriously I should probably get some help with this.

Give me an example of what you ship please? What does it test and how does it do the test? I'll try and give you my opinion on the tariff and why I think it goes there.

I hear that expression every day about "this is what I've done for years" because unfortunately Customs is terrible at enforcing their own rules. All I need is a headline in the business section about a major company getting hit with a billion dollar fine for misclassification and my salary would double over night.

Would love to see what you work with everyday, drop me a line with a few details.

You could try the Postmaster General in Washington DC.and ask for

tracking codes if any.ds

I don't do shipping, but I ordered some stuff off Ebay before Christmas (kid stuff) from the UK and China. Still waiting on one UK order to arrive, but the Chinese orders got here 2 and 3 days after ordering them. They were postmarked from Hong Kong. I was just wondering how the hell the Chinese do it? I did not request expedited shipping. 2 days from Hong Kong to the east coast of the US. I was amazed to say the least. They also sell these figurine toys for 99 cents and charge about $7.00 to $8.00 for shipping because their shipping costs are so low they make their profit from the shipping charge. Learn to speak Mandarin and consult the pros is all I can say.

So,

More or less there isn't any site that is similar to that E-Bay page thatdescribes the quirks of each country?

Joe

A few years ago I shipped an antenna to a friend in Israel. I declared it to be a "radio antenna". When it got there he had to do a whole lot of talking and paper shuffling (including showing them his ham radio license) to avoid 100% duty on the critter. This could all have been avoided if I had simply declared it as "Amateur radio antenna".

Bill

Sounds like a typical Customs SNAFU. It is important to give as much information as possible on the shipping docs. It helps too if the parties on the other side actually read them. I once saw an entry classified as a box, made of wood, because the shipping docs read "Wodden box of nails"