NeXT slabs, recent finds and a request

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_idirect.com>
Date: Fri Apr 13 21:50:07 2001

>McFadden, Mike wrote:

> Surviving customs
> My experience when shipping through customs you must make sure that you
> don't say it's "worthless", they think you are lying. I have tried saying
> "used medical equipment" but they translated that to "medical waste". I
> ended up with "sterile out of date medical equipment that is composed of
> stainless steel and plastic". Actually supplying the least amount of
> information is probably smartest. Try to avoid mention of the
> "radioactive" or in our case "non-radioactive" word. I suspect that any
> mention of any form of the "drug" word would also be a stupid. Mentioning
> that it will be used for educational purposes may have helped.

Jerome Fine replies:

My experience with customs is ONLY from the US to Canada! If you (who
are reading) are interested in this one aspect, read on.

In line with what Mike suggested, I recommend that you ALWAYS attach
some minimum value. There is a threshold for imports into Canada from the
US, however, which is important. In general, due to free trade, most stuff,
in particular computer stuff with the country of origin being the US, does not
have any duty or taxes other than GST (federal Goods and Services Tax).
If you are an ordinary person (not a company), then for Ontario and many
provinces, there is the PST (Provincial Sales Tax). For some provinces,
there is an HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) which I don't have much experience
with since I live in Ontario. For Ontario, the PST is 8% and the GST is 7%
for a total of 15% (there are not added to each other). However, most
businesses in Ontario have a PST exemption, so for a business, only the GST
is charged, and for individuals, the full 15% is charged - both GST and PST.

But, there is a threshold - for a business (and probably the same for an
individual) of $ CAN 20.00 which means that if the GST is less than
$ CAN 1.40, customs will rate the shipment as "low value" and the GST
is not collected - which means that the shipment goes through as a
"courier remission". In general, these days, I attempt to keep the value
under $ US 12.00 to qualify. So if ordering from eBay, if the value
is too high, I rarely bother. Note that this $ US 12.00 includes ONLY
the actual contents, not shipping, handling or insurance.

If I am having something sent, I usually have the value set at at least $ US 5.00
rather than zero since that seems much more reasonable to customs. However,
I recently made a real purchase of $ US 11.00 of a disk drive and cartridges
which weighed about 50 lb. and it was held for a week until customs finally
agree to let it through. From what I heard, the documentation was not
satisfactory and they initially refused to believe that a shipment that cost three
times as much for shipping was worth so little and weighed so much.

The documentation required in all cases is a "Commercial Invoice" with the
minimum being (in 4 copies usually):
Name and address and phone number of Vendor
Name and address and phone number of Customer
Actual cost of the goods being shipped and a detailed breakdown
Country of origin of the goods

When sent via USPS, usually the GREEN customs CN-22 is sufficient.

Note that for most shippers (UPS and FedEx included as far as I know),
when the shipment is sent via air, the shipping cost includes the brokerage
charge for clearing the shipment, which is EXTREMELY important when
the cost is above $ US 12.00 since both these carriers seem to charge
much more than the difference between ground shipping costs and air
(slowest 2-4 days) costs. So, if the shipment is going to incur GST
charges (which for a business are essentially refundable in any case),
it is almost always best to ship by air which means that the only extra
charge for a business is the GST.

Note that these answers are from personal experience with both UPS
and FedEx over the past two years with shipments both less than and
greater than $ US 12.00 and by air as well as ground plus USPS for
only ground shipments. By the way, FedEx via air seems quite hard
on the boxes since the last two 60 lb. boxes that arrived (both about
2 ft. cubes) were almost totally broken to the point that one box was
ready to let the popcorn padding out one of the broken seams on the
side of the box. Fortunately, the vendor had packed the box very
well and the contents (that optical disk drive and cartridges) were
not damaged.

I hope this helps anyone sending from the US to Canada.

I will answer any other questions if there is anything I have not covered.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Fri Apr 13 2001 - 21:50:07 BST