tangno

I got a bill for 11 dollars from UPS stating that I owe duties, not big of a deal, but I was wondering how this works.
THe first time i ordered from dddhouse, i ordered 35 movies with a real value of 235 dollars, the package wasn't opened by customs, i didn't get billed duties for this one.
the second package was for 50 movies, with a declared value from Johnny for 225 dollars, but really over 550 dollars. This package WAS opened by customs and I was billed duties for this package and not the first.
Does anyone know a way to get out of duties besides ordering less movies??? OR why was my package billed?

Trigger if you read this, Can you answer me this?

was it worth wiring johnny the money first , after all the fees from the bank and so fourth??? I know you said you ordered alot of movies and got the wholesale price cuz you wired him the money first, can you tell me how you went about in doing that? I asked this before but you was wondering abuot your situation.

Thanks in advance,
Tang

Yellow Hammer

oh fudge, the HK dealers must either be doing a brisk business or Taiseng is sticking their nose in again. I'm not sure how customs works at figuring out merchandise values but judging from your $11 dollar bill, they have a very good idea on how much each DVD costs. They must be getting a lot of these packages through from DDDHouse in order for them to even notice. I would have thought that the declared value was what they would go by.

axolotls return

Your UPS letter will show the declared value, their brokerage fee. plus the percentage they multiply the declared value by.. then they add it up. It should be all there.

I only rec'd one and I think it was a brokerage fee of $5 + 2.5% of declared value. I can't remember... I think the dog ate it.

tangno

so axolots whatcha sayin is that you never paid??? can i have my dog eat it too??? i mean 11 dollars that another dvd movie...

dleedlee

I got a $5 and change bill from FedEx for an order from Coolala earlier this summer.
That was for a $HK 400 + $HK 200 s/h = $HK600 shipment. I hope this isn't a hint of
things to come. I have a dddhouse order enroute, so I guess I'll find out soon enough.

axolotls return

I am pretty disorganized, so I am sure I'll pay it if they resurface...

Incidentally, I just recieved a FedEx invoice fora bunch of DVDs and they declared the value (pretty high) and it says that they are DVDs.. but the brokerage/duties fee says "$0", as opposed to dleedee who got hit with $5+ or a shipment under US$80.

Weird

Axman

Trigger

I've never been hit, but one of my first orders from HiVizone was kept at the post office and I had to come pick it up as they refused to deliver it to me. I never figured that one out. I might've had to pay something at that time - it was only like 6 DVDs. I can't recall.

Anyway - with the 50 DVD order and Wholesale - I ended up saving something like $50-75 US. My bank charged me like ten bucks I think. It will vary among banks. Anyway - what Johnny did was he had me place an order with a credit card number he gave me and then once I got a receipt I was to send him a reminder email which I did. A day or so later he gave me explicit instructions on what to do next - I took the instructions to my bank and they did the wire for me. It was pretty simple and I saved a good amount of money. Plus - this makes it easy for people without credit cards to buy from Johnny. My package arrived less than 36 hours from when he emailed me that it was shipped. It got here so fast I didn't have time to think.

I don't know about duties or any of that - I've been lucky. Out of the 20 odd packages of various weight and contents from other countries, I've never really had a problem like that. Knock on wood.

cine

FWIW, according to info on the US Custom's website (under the "Internet Purchases" heading), it appears that packages sent via International Postal Service with declared value under $200 are generally exempted from custom import duty.

I have not used this shipping option for purchases from HK (it's not even an available option for some stores) so I not know how long it would take, but my experience with it for packages shipped from France and UK have been very positive so far.