customs around the world

[irus]

a motherboard which is under import is stuck at indian customs since friday 9am. the customs personnel take the weekend off and wrap up the day at 5:30 pm

is customs same everywhere? shouldnt they be working 24/7/365?

Admin note: Moved from T4 to Off Topic

[dr_st]

Customs are the same everywhere and they are always particularly nasty and annoying. They are TEH SUCK.

Working 24/7/365, yeah, right. You'll be lucky to have your item processed in less than a week. And then better hope that they don't decide to charge you import tax.

[archer6]

a motherboard which is under import is stuck at indian customs since friday 9am. the customs personnel take the weekend off and wrap up the day at 5:30 pm

is customs same everywhere? shouldnt they be working 24/7/365?

Customs is a unique (read independent) operation, which in my experience in various parts of the world, can be incredibly stubborn & inefficient. With a mind of their own & knowing we have no control over them they seem to run rampant. However that said, I have noticed modest improvements in their operations in some locations in recent times. And yet some of what they do (or don't do) still puzzles me.
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I agree with you. However common sense does not always prevail.
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Cheers...
posted via BlackBerry Bold

[carlisle_united]

The swedish costom is pretty fast.
The longest I have hade something delayed due to customs was my T43 motherboard and that one stayed in custom 2 days.
It took so long time that I actually called the customs office and asked if there was a problem with the packet.
The said no and then said that the will find the packat and clear it stright away... And 1 hour late I could see on the tracking homepage
that it had cleared customs.

[irus]

hmm ill call em up tomorrow morning! reminders for bureacracy a must!!

[killer]

Indian bureaucracy has a formidable reputation. What is questionable is whether the British gave that to India, or whether India gave that to the British?

[irus]

it will need a generational shift to have the bureaucracy work faster! which is already on its way! i spoke with the officer he was courteous and said there was a staff crunch will get it done in 1-2 days.!


india was the crown jewel so brits controlled it tightly. the indian maharajas were always in status quo except for invasions from north west like alexander 3bc /mohd ghori/mohd ghazni 1000ad/ change catalysts brits french dutch coming in 17th century

so we know where the urge for tight control comes from and where the status quo comes from.

but this generation is demanding and fast. i thought shutting shop at 530 was akin to be living in a village! seems like its like this everywhere! things will improve!

[mattbiernat]

I paid customs in dominica for my toothbrush.... so go figure.

[jdhurst]

Canada and the US share a trade pact that does away with most duties, so customs is not a big issue here. A bigger problem for me is brokerage: a vastly, and incredibly overpriced service that provides no real value at all. The only shipper in the US and in Canada that provide sane brokerage service is the USPS and Canada Post. The rest of them charge way too much money. ... JDH

[ArtShapiro]

Can't offer much, but want to share my own personal runin with customs. This was quite a few years ago, where I had a pretty hectic week in Mobile, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, and Montreal, Quebec. I went through Canadian customs with three reels of computer tape on my arm - this was before newfangled stuff like cassettes or CDs.

Canadian customs charged me $25 per reel for the privilege of bringing the open-reel tapes into the country, despite them being my own (actually employer's) property being brought back out the next day.

Art

[irus]

customs in new delhi india were great to work with back in 2005 now they seem to take forever. it was 24 hours last time now its going to be a week and no trace of item clearing customs.

though one cant fault the officers they are in contact and easily available. but they are citing shortage of staff constantly.

[NorrisCell]

Canada and the US share a trade pact that does away with most duties, so customs is not a big issue here. A bigger problem for me is brokerage: a vastly, and incredibly overpriced service that provides no real value at all. The only shipper in the US and in Canada that provide sane brokerage service is the USPS and Canada Post. The rest of them charge way too much money. ... JDH

Shipping to and from Canada in the US is fairly hassle-free. USPS rates to Canada are considered discounted international and therefore pretty reasonable. Customs delay to Canada is usually only one day. On the flip side of that, items from the UK have taken a month or more total to get to me before. Not sure if it works the same in reverse, because it's very rare that anyone from the UK wants a phone from ME. I had an auction go to someone in Chile a while back and the delay was negligible for customs. Haven't dealt with customs anywhere else recently.

[RealBlackStuff]

I ship fairly regularly to the UK, and have only very positive results.
My last shipment was dropped by me at the Post Office on Tuesday 07/07 at 11.45am and it arrived on Friday 07/10 in the UK.
[Editorial change: that's drop off on July 7, and arrival on July 10]
It was a small package, shipped via First Class Mail International.

[dr_st]

Small packages often, in fact in most cases, slip past customs, unless it is really obvious they hold something of great value.

Try shipping a laptop though.

[killer]

I ship fairly regularly to the UK, and have only very positive results.
My last shipment was dropped by me at the Post Office on Tuesday 07/07 at 11.45am and it arrived on Friday 07/10 in the UK.
It was a small package, shipped via First Class Mail International.

LOL, 3 months is pretty quick.

I bet your mammy would slap your [censored] for using the month/day system.

[jdhurst]

<snip>
I bet your mammy would slap your [censored] for using the month/day system.

Is there another way? ... JDH

[hausman]

Seconds since New Year's Day 1970?

[RealBlackStuff]

I totally agree that the US and Canada use an utterly idiot date system, with their mm-dd-yy.
Everybody else uses dd-mm-yy.

[killer]

Including the USA with 4th of July.

[dsvochak]

We could all switch to yy-mm-dd and be universally unhappy.

[qviri]

.

[hausman]

Canada uses mm-dd-yy? I must have missed the memo!

And also the memo about metrification The preferred format is yyyy-mm-dd, e.g. 2009-07-12. (Personally I like dd-MMM-yy, e.g. 12Jul09, but that's neither bilingual nor does it collate nicely.)

As for Canada Customs, the official line is that anything with a declared value under CA$20 enters free of GST/PST and duty. Similarly gifts under CA$60 providing there's a handwritten note inside that indicates it's a gift.

Anything over those thresholds may be subject to duty plus GST/PST and a $5 brokerage fee by Canada Post. However they do have discretion and often let stuff in that's valued at under $100, especially if it's in a small package. As JDH said, this discretion doesn't apply to other carriers, especially UPS (who are notorious for their rapacious brokerage fees.)

[NorrisCell]

And also the memo about metrification The preferred format is yyyy-mm-dd, e.g. 2009-07-12. (Personally I like dd-MMM-yy, e.g. 12Jul09, but that's neither bilingual nor does it collate nicely.)

Ugh, don't get me started on the US measurement system. Makes no bloody sense at all.

The US military use the dd-MMM-yy to avoid confusion between countries, which makes sense

Metric FTW

[tom lightbody]

well, how we got off onto date formats I just don't know--
a favorite of mine, picked up in Poland, is the old East Bloc
system, dd-mm-yy but with the mm in roman numerals:
thus 12vii9==12jul9--but usually this system is shorter, e.g.
1i9 vs 1jan9: and I cheat a little with iix instead of viii for aug

[killer]

well, how we got off onto date formats I just don't know--

Me again ... mea culpa ... time for me to stop this habit. However, I just picked up on RBS saying it took from 7/7 to 7/10 for something to go from the US to UK, which is 3 months in most of the world and 3 days in the US.