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That sounds quite bothersome! I'm under the impression that a lot of the documentation/declaration requirements depend on the carrier and service you're using and generally, more established shipping companies seem to be able to abstract the process a lot (although I can't say with confidence that it's the same in the UK, especially post-brexit).

In general, package forwarders in the US only require a short abbreviated "laymen's terms" description of the contents that they don't seem to challenge in any way at all (I've brought over instruments, LA and scope blades for the 16700 mainframe, consumer and industrial electronics like servo drives and motors, teach pendants for robots etc., mostly multiple packages consolidated into a single shipment). Depending on the arrangement, duties and VAT was either billed and paid for when placing the shipping order _or_ I got notified by mail with the instructions when the goods reached the country, then after I paid the duties, it cleared customs and it was on its way to me.

Gabor

On Thu, Mar 6, 2025, 11:05 Tom Gardner via <tggzzz=[email protected]> wrote:

Some observations from the UK. TL;DR: fleabay's GSP is wonderful, much better for me than my shipping my sales directly.

When I've bought something direct from the orient, e.g. a BusPirate5 or Digilent Analog Discovery, the courier won't deliver it to me until I pay them 20%VAT/import duties plus ?20 admin fee. Those often make it better to buy from local importers.

Import/export regulations hit more than "electronics". Somebody in the USA put one of my ~100yo Fuller calculators in their fleabay basket, but fleabay wouldn't let them buy it. The reason is unclear, but is probably that I had stated it was made of wood and metal. Apparently the US prohibits imports of wood. I'm glad fleabay prevented that sale, because if fleabay's GSP shippers or US import agencies had detected wood, it would probably have been summarily destroyed without returning it to me. Guess who would have lost out.

As for batteries, it seems that batteries which are an integral part of the equipment don't provoke the shipping immune response. Caveat: I haven't looked at shipping equipment with "modern" lithium batteries, nor recently shipped battery powered equipment overseas, nor "naked" spare batteries.

As with any tree-shaped classification scheme (e.g. Dewey Decimal for books), selecting the customs code is not only arbitrarily complex but also ambiguous and ever changing. ISTR some types of fast Tek scopes with MCP CRTs were classified differently for export purposes: 2465 OK, 2467 sometimes not OK. For the UK, the anti-insomnia "medication" is?

?

For "oscilloscope" that leads to and if you look down several pages you find imports require 20% VAT and in some cases 35% retaliatory duties. Getting those ever-changing duties correct is something that will require vast numbers of customs agents and border checks and/or couriers that act conservatively because they don't want to jeopardise their standing with governments. Wonderful, just wonderful.

No doubt other countries have similar tools.