New US Customs Form Rules??

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RedWing7

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Not sure if this is the right area for this........

Today I had to go to the local USPS post office to send 5 bubble mailers to Canada. Normally not that big of a deal, maybe a a little wait in line, but pretty quick once I hit the counter. So I get up to the clerk and she then tells me that they now have to manually enter in my address, the recipients address, and some of the other info from the customs form. Wonderful-after spending just under 25 minutes at the counter :foottap: and having an angry mob form behind me in line I was on my way. Does anyone know when/why this changed? It is quite the hassle-especially with multiple packages, and will likely reduce me to shipping once a week on Saturday when I might have time to wait in line.

Has anyone else experienced this???
 
That happened to me once, about a month or so ago, but the lady said they had changed it back because it was taking so much time. Not sure if they changed back again or not, though. Seems like an extraordinary amount of time, especially if you fill out a customs form anyways beforehand.
 
My post office guy said it started 10/1 & was due to Canadian Customs new requirements. Said everything had to be entered into the computer & expect a lot more packages being opened going north of the border checking for correct values on the forms. He said I should start putting a reciept in the package to insure the reciever didn't have to pay a made up tax by the border control guys, the last one I shipped was a $1.00 auction that the buyer paid $3.50 for shipping. He said that package would likely be opened after 10/1, this was a couple of days before.
 
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Krusin said:
My post office guy said it started 10/1 & was due to Canadian Customs new requirements. Said everything had to be entered the computer & expect a lot more packages being opened going north of the border checking for correct values on the forms. I would start putting a reciept in the package to insure the reciever didn't have to pay a made up tax by the border control guys.
Click to expand...

Thats fine if you sell something but what if you trade for it? Than you put say $150 down and they have to pay a fee than that person would be ticked off. I for one don't know how they can put a value on something that was traded
 
Sucks but I don't make the rules. In your case you could say it was a gift, I think it's still taxed though, glad it isn't that way here. I do know when I've traveled on business to Canada customs was a BIG Hassle. Everything I had for the business trip was questioned & logged, they wanted to know if I would be leaving anything in Canada or if I was bringing everything back. Not sure what would of happened if I had said the materials would stay.
 
I had this happen about 2 months ago, if you want to save time, you can do the custom form online on the usps website. Then take it to the post office and it will be alot quicker because it will already be in there system +
 
Ya, they did this to me once or twice a couple months ago but haven't done it since. They pertty much had to re-type everything you wrote on the customs form.
 
I would assume this won't affect customs forms filled out electronically, either through PayPal or stamps.com? I take my bubblers to my P.O. at around 5:15 AM on my way to work and drop them in the 13 ounce drop. I'm hoping to avoid the P.O. if I can since I don't have access to one at work and don't want to wait until the weekend to ship internationally where I can waste time at the P.O.
 
Strange, I took a bunch of mailers to the PO yesterday with my customs forms already filled out and the guy didn't have to do anything different than he normally does. Maybe he didn't know or was just saving it to enter later?
 
EDIT: whoops looks like I misread the OP

I haven't mailed anything out recently....hopefully it's not too much of a pain....its time consuming enough having to fill out the forms already.

If they have to do anything with the printed out labels from ebay I would really freak lol Sometimes I'm sending out like 15-20 packages at a time...for that I would definitely just put it in the 13oz drop box and run lol
 
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Happened to me today. The clerk had to enter in all of the ifnormation manually. I was at the counter for about 20 min for 6 packages. She explained that you can go online, fill everything out, and print it so it can just be scanned at the counter and all the info will be there. Hopefully the online form will alow things to move fairly smooth. My one question as a seller is that i wonder if this input of information directly into the USPS site will give sellers more of a leg to stand on when it comes to an item not recieved case. I mean realistically the input of this information is a proof that you did ship the item. Of course not with tracking but it throws out the "did you really send it" argument.


Adam
 
Hope stamps.com won't be affected by this change. I'm thinking about starting to part out a lot of my collection but the drawback for me was all the post office time spent. Was looking into stamps.com but maybe w/ this new change that website won't AS convenient that I thought it would be.
 
We used to do it here all the time to send to US but they changed it a few years back I used to sell on ebay quite often but with small packets we no longer do Maybe ask for the forms to take home and you can do them there before you get to PO They used to hand me a pile of 30 or so and i just filled them out at home may be worth a try.
 
My PO just made me start doing them online. Fine by me. And now that I'm doing that, I'll probably go buy me a scale and do it all from home.

Cole
 
I have pretty much given up shipping to Canada outside of ebay. Its just too much time/pain to take 30 minutes to ship a $5 card. Ill just take the 10% hit and sell it on ebay...
 


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