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so how hard is it really? i have never shipped anything outside the u.s. before and i was curious as to what you really have to do to pull it off. i wanted to offer it on my pyos i’m putting up tonight plus some other stuff, but i was all scared and intimidated. are there extra procedures you have to go thru at the post office? i know the postage rate is different obviously, but do i need to have the box open for them to inspect what’s in there? will someone else open it down the line?
i’d love some tips from a real human who has done this before to take the mystery and scariness out of it all! i just want to ship to europe and canada ( i know they are not overseas but they are out of country) for now. i appreciate any advice or tales! thanks!You just need to fill out a customs form. You have to list the contents, fill out the addresses again, and sign and date. thats it. You dont have to open the box or anything like that. The only difference is the customs form… and I think you have to actually go to the post office to mail it instead of the curbside service that some sellers have.
oooh thanks ski! that’s not too bad! certainly pack him for a long trip too, but i pack well anyway. that doesn’t sound bad at all. since i live in town, i have to go to the post office anyway to mail anything other than a small letter, so the trip to the post is no sweat! cool beans!
Whatever you do, try never to ship anything USPS outside the US. I mean if you have to, you have to, but I find the USPS unreliable. Spend the extra money to ship UPS, DHL, or Fed Ex. I have had nothing but grief from the US post office in overseas cases and I never use them for even paper documents overseas anymore.
Insurance becomes a heavy issue because if you put insurance on a piece that say, sells for $100 on Ebay and the buyer is from Canada, and you put on $100 worth of insurance, that will become a duty fee that the buyer of the piece will need to pay. I once sold an emerald fledgeling for $50 and put $50 insurance on it, and the buyer contacted me with great anger that she’d have to pay $25 for the duty fee…50% of what the insurance rate was placed on the dragon. In the end we split the fee. Duties always seem to change and other countries can do whatever they want, charge what they want duty-wise on something that has insurance. Once a package ships outside the US you kinda just have to pray it all goes well. Most of the time it does, but sometimes there can be trouble. I won’t go into some of my bad experiences but now I don’t put insurance on anything unless the buyer requests it and they understand the duty fees THEY may incur by so doing. It can be a touchy issue.
Also, you may have to fill out anywhere from 1-3 forms. Different postal offices have different things but the main form is the customs form, which is no biggie…you just fill out what the item is. Also, a BIG help to avoid duty fees and the like is to list it as a birthday gift because somrtimes if you say “fine art sculpture” or something and the customs agent looks in the box (especially shipping to Mexico), they can say, hey, I think this is worth more than the worth you specified on your customs form and will charge a duty on it. It’s curropt but there’s nothing you can do so try to svoid saying it’s artwork. Just say painted sculpture or painted dragon figure, etc. Dumb down what it is.
Another problem I have run into is that even with placing insurance on something, you will need to proove its value. With artwork this is difficult but since you’re selling over Ebay this becomes much more easy to claim true worth. Print out and keep the ebay receipts! If the sculpture gets damaged and you have insurance on it this will proove that you got X dollars for it. Otherwise you’re screwed. Trust me, I sold paintings and clay and other artworks before off-ebay and couldn’t proove anything in such cases and even with insurance I got nothing back and had to re-imburse the buyer, thereby loosing money off a sale!
I don’t say any of this to scare you but be prepared as a serious seller to come across various shipping issues when going overseas. It’s a gamble. I fear it myself. Maybe others have had far better experiences than me but I do about 75% of my overall business overseas and it’s always an issue for me.
I’ll add to this and make myself a bit of a devil’s advocate, since I’m in Canada and on the receiving end.
When shipping with the post office, anything with a value above 15$ (and I think is CA, not US) is taxable. So for instance, I did a trade with someone; she put the value at 100$ for insurance purposes and I had to pay around 25$ in taxed when I picked up the package.
When shipping with UPS (that’s the only courrier with which I have any experience), on top of the duty/tax, you pay a brokerage fee. For something at 100$, I think it can go up to 30-40$.
I’ve never had any problems as far as the package went on both ends, though. The one time I received a damaged piece was because the seller was an idiot and didn’t pack properly.
That’s my 2 cents. Hope it helps!
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http://www.sarahjestin.com/feedbacklists.htmIt’s really not as big of a deal as people say, I just hate it sometimes with ebay because I’ve had packages wanering around the country or just stuck in customs for up to a month and if the person you are selling something to isn’t understanding it can get ugly. 99% of the time it’s just like shipping to the US, but you have more forms to fill out and it takes a little longer.
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Dreamscape, Orion, Poison Dart, Fireberry, Spangler + Tigerberry Dragonsdragonmedley wrote:When shipping with the post office, anything with a value above 15$ (and I think is CA, not US) is taxable. So for instance, I did a trade with someone; she put the value at 100$ for insurance purposes and I had to pay around 25$ in taxed when I picked up the package.
When shipping with UPS (that’s the only courrier with which I have any experience), on top of the duty/tax, you pay a brokerage fee. For something at 100$, I think it can go up to 30-40$.
I mentioned this before, but I sent a birthday present through UPS to Canada from the US and ended up with $55+ COD from brokerage fees and taxes on the item. That was on a gift! The items value was listed as $95.00, just under the free $100.00 insurance limit provided by UPS.
So, from my experience, I wouldn’t recommend shipping UPS to Canada unless the seller specifically asks for it.
thanks guys for the advice! nothing better than getting advice from peeps who ship that way all the time! thats crazy about those canadian fees etc. taxed on the value of incoming mail? i guess thats something you just have to absorb if you want something shipped to you from the u.s. huh? or you split it with the seller?
i’ve had stuff shipped to me from the u.k. and it was always like clockwork, really smooth n quick.well, we’ll see when i actually get my auctions up.. my mom is having a serious case of sudden on-set blindness from her diabetes that just came up about 36 hours ago. shes at the dr. now and they’re trying to save her sight.. if they can’t get the pressure under control in the next couple hours, she has to go in for emergency surgery to keep her from going totally blind by morning. 🙁 if you are a prayer, please say a prayer and have warm fuzzy thoughts for my mom; our family will be devastated if she goes totally blind and needs constant care!
anyhoo, that means my pieces may not get photgraphed til who knows when, that was supposed to be tonight, but hey sometimes LIFE happens and you have to deal with it. awwwww poopus! it was divine timing that they at least they were out here in r.i. for a visit instead of in n.y., as both her drs. are out here. she would have been in real trouble if my dad was away on jobs and she couldn’t get out here for days!
anyway thanks for all the input, yes i am scared a little more now( just a tiny bit), but the mystery is gone! heck i’ve had items get lost in the mail coming to me from 2 states away! stuff doesn’t need to go overseas to get bungled, thats for sure!Adding my voice to dragonmedley’s: I’m in Canada and I absolutely always request USPS for shipping because of the 40% brokerage fee I’d have to pay with private courrier companies (UPS, Fed Ex and so on). I do always request insurance for the full value and yes, I get to pay 14% taxes when I get the item, but I’d have to pay taxes if I bought it in a store here anyways, so I don’t mind so much. But 40% brokerage fee is definitely too high, for example, on my flame POW if I had used UPS, I would have had to pay a $138 brokerage fee to UPS + the 14% taxes!
So yes, in my opinion, USPS is better for shipping over the border (I don’t know about overseas though) and I’ve never had a problem with them.
One other thing… You should always ship with a service that provides tracking numbers, that way, the buyer can’t say he never got the item. I learned this one the hard way!
But USPS doesn’t provide tracking does it? If so, is that something they have started offering within the past 2 years because I stopped shipping overseas with USPS about 3 years ago.
Whenever I ship to Canada now I specify that whatever I am sending has a cost under $10 no matter how much the product costs just to avoid those duty and/or tax fees.
My best wishes in this ordeal TF and please do keep us updated on this. I hope she doesn’t loose her eyesight.
I don’t know if USPS offers tracking on ALL services, but they do offer it on USPS Airmail Parcel Post, and the fun thing is that USPS and Canada Post tracking numbers are usable on either website, meaning that I can use my Canada Post tracking number on http://www.usps.com and vice-versa.
You can always choose to get a Delivery Confrimation Number for your package at the USPS. I’ve been doing that for the books I am selling on Amazon.com Marketplace and shipping via Media Mail. For those packages it’s $.60 and for priority mail it’s less than that.
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