Shipping through customs Canada<->USA...Was : NeXT slabs, recent finds and a request

> Surviving customs > My experience when shipping through customs you must make sure that you > don't say it's "worthless", they think you are lying. I have tried

> "used medical equipment" but they translated that to "medical waste". I > ended up with "sterile out of date medical equipment that is composed of > stainless steel and plastic". Actually supplying the least amount of > information is probably smartest. Try to avoid mention of the > "radioactive" or in our case "non-radioactive" word. I suspect that any > mention of any form of the "drug" word would also be a stupid.

Jerome Fine replies: My experience with customs is ONLY from the US to Canada! If you (who are reading) are interested in this one aspect, read on. In line with what Mike suggested, I recommend that you ALWAYS attach some minimum value. There is a threshold for imports into Canada from the US, however, which is important. In general, due to free trade, most

in particular computer stuff with the country of origin being the US, does

have any duty or taxes other than GST (federal Goods and Services Tax). If you are an ordinary person (not a company), then for Ontario and many provinces, there is the PST (Provincial Sales Tax). For some provinces, there is an HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) which I don't have much experience with since I live in Ontario. For Ontario, the PST is 8% and the GST is

for a total of 15% (there are not added to each other). However, most businesses in Ontario have a PST exemption, so for a business, only the

is charged, and for individuals, the full 15% is charged - both GST and

But, there is a threshold - for a business (and probably the same for an individual) of $ CAN 20.00 which means that if the GST is less than $ CAN 1.40, customs will rate the shipment as "low value" and the GST is not collected - which means that the shipment goes through as a "courier remission". In general, these days, I attempt to keep the value under $ US 12.00 to qualify. So if ordering from eBay, if the value is too high, I rarely bother. Note that this $ US 12.00 includes ONLY the actual contents, not shipping, handling or insurance. If I am having something sent, I usually have the value set at at least $

rather than zero since that seems much more reasonable to customs.

I recently made a real purchase of $ US 11.00 of a disk drive and

which weighed about 50 lb. and it was held for a week until customs

agree to let it through. From what I heard, the documentation was not satisfactory and they initially refused to believe that a shipment that

times as much for shipping was worth so little and weighed so much. The documentation required in all cases is a "Commercial Invoice" with the minimum being (in 4 copies usually): Name and address and phone number of Vendor Name and address and phone number of Customer Actual cost of the goods being shipped and a detailed breakdown Country of origin of the goods When sent via USPS, usually the GREEN customs CN-22 is sufficient. Note that for most shippers (UPS and FedEx included as far as I know), when the shipment is sent via air, the shipping cost includes the

charge for clearing the shipment, which is EXTREMELY important when the cost is above $ US 12.00 since both these carriers seem to charge much more than the difference between ground shipping costs and air (slowest 2-4 days) costs. So, if the shipment is going to incur GST charges (which for a business are essentially refundable in any case), it is almost always best to ship by air which means that the only extra charge for a business is the GST. Note that these answers are from personal experience with both UPS and FedEx over the past two years with shipments both less than and greater than $ US 12.00 and by air as well as ground plus USPS for only ground shipments. By the way, FedEx via air seems quite hard on the boxes since the last two 60 lb. boxes that arrived (both about 2 ft. cubes) were almost totally broken to the point that one box was ready to let the popcorn padding out one of the broken seams on the side of the box. Fortunately, the vendor had packed the box very well and the contents (that optical disk drive and cartridges) were not damaged. I hope this helps anyone sending from the US to Canada. I will answer any other questions if there is anything I have not covered. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine