Hi,
Regarding the import duties when shipping from The Netherlands to abroad
countries there are probably various tricks to "restrict the damage".
When I order something from the US that has a value of, say, $200, I simply
ask them to declare the value as some $75 or so. The tax-free boundary for
importing stuff into The Netherlands is at some $30, and for anything above
that, you pay 25%. So, in this case, you would have to pay 250ver $45,
which is not too much of an overhead. The theory behind doing it this way,
rather than having it declared for something like $40 is that this way the
customs will not really be suspicious of the declared amount. If it would be
very near the tax-free boundary, they may (or may not) double check the
price with a camera store or so. Similar tricks should probably apply to
other countries too. I think I've also read that you can declare an item as
"repaired item" or something like that, and that you then pay 0 0uties, but
I'm not sure.
The only caveat in declaring lower values of course, is that IF something
happens to the item during shipping, it was underinsured. But then again, I
wonder just how well these insurances work in the first place. So far,
fortunately, I've never needed to try to get money back from USPS or so. I
wonder how well that works...
On another note: I read there was some concern about the shipping times from
The Netherlands. As Jaap is not on the list (yet), I double checked this
with him, and he told me that unless explicitely requested otherwise, by
default he ships his items via priority mail (which should take between 1
and 2 weeks).
Cheers!
Olafo
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