Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!! Stupid cutoms charge

[Dryglove]

Just my luck.My Vytec finally arrives from simply scuba and wouldnt you know it,theres a 36.00 customs charge attached.As my luck would have it,i didnt have 36.00 cash on me at the moment so now i have to go to the post office tomorrow morning and pick it up.I guess i should have known better when it was stuck at customs for a week.Has anybody else have this happen?

 

[ERP]

7 or 8 years ago the company I worked for used to order various bits and pieces from Hong Kong not really enough to justify using an agent for the purchases.

Customs charges were a complete crap shoot, sometimes they'd charge them, sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes the stuff would clear customs without any hassle other times it'd take weeks.

Customs is just a pain in the ass, but there isn't much you can do about it.

 

[Scubaroo]

Ordered from Simply Scuba twice now, and never had a customs charge - both orders were $800+.

Been hit with customs from DiveInn though.

Bummer!!!

 

[Aquamaniac]

I import stuff worlwide on a weekly basis, big and small and from a wide range of places.
Customs tarriffs are hit and miss. Many times, a bit of digging and a play on words, and you can re-classify the component so as to reduce the tarriff.
Its also luck, and who is "on the desk" when it arrives.

With people like "Genesis" running around making a heap of noise about online purchasing, it does not suprise me that someone in the department has decided to look into simplyscuba and diveinn.
In this day and age, with databases and networks its not hard to put a flag on a supplier, and start looking into tarriffs when goods come in.
It will be interesting to see if the trend continues. You may not be the last to be hit with charges.

 

[Bob3]

I also do a fair amount of importing; the tarriffs started hitting briskly earlier in the year about the same time GWB started slapping steel tarrifs on.
Add on the shrinking dollar / exchange rate, & a lot of the fun has gone out of shopping overseas.

 

[BlueDolphin]

I hate it.. cause I like buying from Dive Inn. I do admit though.... that it never made sense to me that I could import something for CHEAP.... but when I try to sell overseas... it is rediculous the hoops I have to jump through and the charges that I or my customer gets hit with. I find that I can't do business overseas, but THEY can do business here. I never liked that.

BUT... I do hate to see the HOT deals go away!