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Shady Lane

UPS and customs charges

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A customer of mine bought a citation one and two on ebay and it insured it for like 2000 or 2500 from canada..Anyway he had it sent to me direct in michigan so I can rebuild and upgrade it but when I received it the ups had a 32 dollar customs fee which I had to pay the driver.Come to find out I never paid this fee when I got somthing sent to me canadian air post and I think its a fee UPS collected because I had to make the check out to ups customs brokerage.I heard of people refusing to pay it but the customer didnt mind when i told him and I was worried if it was damaged they wouldnt honor the insurance ..I thought nafta takes care of most these charges and I never pay customs when I buy 500 dollar worth of big caps from solen sent canada air post or ground.Is this strange or is this becuase of UPS only?

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Re: UPS and customs charges - unclestu52 15:07:49 01/20/06 (0)
What the sender is supposed to have stated on the custom form was that the unit was being returned for service. Since the Citation was built in the US that would have absolved you of any custom charges in both directions.
Its quite important to do that or else charges will incur as the custom brokers have no idea of what's happening. As other have stated UPS and FEX are very strict about following the letter of the law.
As an aside, a customer of mine sent a Forsell Arm back to Sweden and his custom declaration read:tonearm , part of an $18K TT. Forsell refused the arm as the duty was over a thousand dollars. On the other hand I recently sent a Jadis preamp (new price $15K) back to France for upgrades and repair. It was stated unit being returned for repair on the custom invoice and a sales invoice had to be
provided. There were no customs charges coming and going.

Stu
Re: UPS and customs charges - Bobber 16:36:48 01/18/06 (0)
I'm the shipping manager for a large int'l distributor and deal with Custom's services worldwide - the best way to avoid duties or taxes on import or export gear is to use the respective postal services of the countries involved. The US Postal Service isn't really geared up to assess and collect tariffs on small import shipments whereas UPS/FEDX/DHL etc are, they all have US Customs stations housed in their air hubs. (btw, the $32 charge from UPS breaks down like this: $2.00 Tariff & $25.00 Custom Entry Fee for Uncle Sam and $5.00 to UPS, a disbursement fee because they paid Customs the $27.00 - some racket, eh?) NAFTA tariff exclusions usually don't apply for our hobby as it only excludes from tariff goods made in a NAFTA country - and yes, overseas made caps, resistors, etc are liable for tariff even if the component was assembled in the USA or Canada.
Oh, even if there is NO tariff at all, you still gotta pay the $25 entry fee and $5 disbursement fee - like I said, some racket, eh?
Re: UPS and customs charges - thetubeguy1954 05:40:07 01/16/06 (0)
I had to pay customs on some audio equipment I bought from Canada and had shipped to Orlando, Fla. According to the seller (an audio store) I was warned BEFORE they shipped , that there may and there may not be customs charges.
I guess it all depends on which custom agent sees it and what they decide. FYI this product was shipped via BAX Global.
Thetubeguy1954 (Tom Scata)

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