On 11/29/2015 11:27 AM, 'threeneurons' via neonixie-l wrote:
> Seems German Customs needs to see an invoice accessible from the outside. I > tend not to ship any paperwork. Only the required Customs Declaration > pasted on the box. I think I'll have to invest in these: Doesn't matter. We did it correctly and out products still sat in customs for weeks. Amazingly enough, the nearby countries that you'd expect to have the most problems with, France and Italy, no problems at all. If you have a UPS account, their software will present you with all the necessary forms and request all necessary data for the country you're shipping to. And if you pay their $35 brokerage fee, they'll handle all customs paperwork at the receiving end. I highly recommend having an account even if you don't use them much or at all. The account is free. We run stuff that's going USPS through the UPS system just to make sure we have all the forms and declarations. The post office is pretty useless in that regard. We recently shipped an induction heated lead melting machine to a Canadian utility. That was a week-long, nerve-wracking ordeal. My first mistake was taking the machine to a company that packs stuff for shipment. They had no idea what forms were needed and simply put an address label on the box. It took UPS's regional export expert almost a week to straighten out what was to be an overnight shipment. I shipped the second machine via Fedex at a Kinkos/Fedex center and everything was done perfectly but that's another story. I learned something from the UPS expert. Thanks to the panphobia rampant in this country post 9/11 as embodied in the Patriot (sic) Act, one is now supposed to be a TSA certified shipper before shipping items out of the country. Why TSA? Who knows? I don't have the stomach to read the Patriot (sic) Act. Our attorney is researching this but I suspect that any of us who ship stuff across the border are breaking the law. Customs probably pays no attention to small, low declared value items but they sure did my lead melter ($5k). I had to transfer ownership of the machine to UPS and they technically exported it. Something to at least think about, if not worry about. Meanwhile we are USA-only sales until we get this clarified. John -- John DeArmond Tellico Plains, Occupied TN http://www.fluxeon.com <-- THE source for induction heaters http://www.neon-john.com <-- email from here http://www.johndearmond.com <-- Best damned Blog on the net https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbraJoanOriginals <-- please visit PGP key: wwwkeys.pgp.net: BCB68D77 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/565B369F.2040002%40neon-john.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
