I've talked to Ian about this, it's not a big issue, I'm trying to see if this is worldwide or local to Canada - I think it is the latter.
On a $US29 PCB order inc DHL (which is a bargain BTW) I pay about $US14 on receipt of the order. The duty/taxes is 12% which is minimal, DHL add about $US12 of processing fees. This not limited to DP, the google reviews of the local office are full of similar complaints - they're over zealous on collection of duty to profit on the fees. Fedex/UPS/Post will let through up to $US200 with no duty.
I'm curious if anyone else eg. Europe sees issues like this. I'm not expecting Ian will add Fedex et al just for little Canada, but if there's a bunch of people seeing this it might be worth his while.
In the Netherlands it is even worse.
Under 22 EUR (+-25$) for combined shipping and goods no duties are needed. more will add 21% VAT with I believe 20 EUR processing fees. Even worse when the shipping costs are not specified they assume the listprice which is insane (they assumed 100$ instead of 25$ for this packet). I did paid in the end about 50 eur for a 50$ total order :/
Getting extra paid money paid back is very cumbersome, it involved getting a letter from dhl, which allows me to make a complaint with customs. then I need to send that letter, with the invoice to the customs. They process it in like 4 weeks. Then they refund it to dhl, which I should then ask to transfer the money to me.
I usually have to pay VAT on most imports but most of the times Dirty PCBs are under the values for customs.
I have to say I do prefer (and I'm not sure if its possible for you to provide) Fedex.
I usually import via economy so while it takes longer after my first import with them I got them to link my business's credit card to my address so any import VAT automatically gets billed to it and they waive the £10 admin fee I get charged in the UK.
I remember the 29.95 fees for Dhl in Netherlands (or was it FedEx). If FedEx and ups are better I will add them. back. They have good base rates but always charged us an extra 5USD for door to door delivery than the supposed price. It got annoying so we just disabled them. Can add them back.
Here in Malaysia at least, FedEx doesn't charge a single cent on custom clearing. They do it automatically and have the courtesy to SMS the tax amount in the morning before shipment arrive in the afternoon. DHL and lousy UPS charge some few tens of RM. At times more than the tax, and had to be instructed to clear the custom for you.
I found with Fedex the fees are only if you don't have your details with them. After I did my first import with them then the fees got waived.
I'm not sure about outside the UK but I know others and myself who have had DHL not send the invoices for VAT and then get the overdue invoice letters affecting our credit ratings.
But I'm happy either way.
- Ryan
In Greece if the total cost of goods originated outside the European Union plus shipping is less than 22EUROS (~25$US) and the goods are for private (ie no commercial) use there is no extra charge.
However for goods exceeding this value we have :
UPS/FedEx/TNT/DHL customs handling fees ~ 60-100 EUROS
+
Import Goods Duty 2% ... 100+% depending on goods duty class
+
UPS/FedEx/TNT/DHL Storage fees 10+EUROS/day depending on size/weight of parcel
+
23 % VAT on the TOTAL
The whole sport is VERY EXPENSIVE !!!
Ok, seems like a lot of people are paying this but many of you regardless of the carrier. Ian I guess putting Fedex back on the list would be cool but not sure you can justify the time.
Here in the UK I've been happy with DHL. They just send me an SMS to say I have VAT to pay and the charges (£4.19 for example) haven't had any crazy fees as I've had in the past with some other couriers.
I am also in Canada and DHL charges $10.50 processing fee and $4.25 transaction fee for every package I receive, in addition to the taxes & duty. The last two packages had duty & taxes of ~$3 but the additional fees brought the COD cost to $20.
I called DHL and there doesn't seem to be any easy way to avoid the $10.50 processing fee, other than self-clearing. The transaction fee can be avoided by setting up a brokerage account (requiring a credit application). Self-clearing, which I have done in the past with UPS, is a significant amount of additional work.
FedEx is nice because duties & taxes charged to an account don't incur any additional fees. Setting up a FedEx account is easy and free, even for residential customers.
I do like that DHL allows the COD charges to be paid online with a credit card before delivery.
Please add other couriers. We have to pay penalty fees over the R1000.00 (ZAR) and it takes forever to get customs to release it once they have flagged it because of the low amount that DirtyPCB's declare.
Bristol, UK.
No charge so far with DHL Hong Kong.
Chicago, USA. So far no charges from DHL.
I already had similar problem with a company over charging processing fee for custom clearance in Germany.
The resolution was simple, I refuse to pay those fee and cleared the tax directly with the custom office. At least in Germany, no company can decide to give a service, and then tell you that you need to pay for something you didn't ask for!
They always presented it like it was the way to do thing, and that THEY need to do the custom clearance. Actually sending the bill (or order confirmation email) was enough, I transfer the money directly to the custom service bank account and a few days later my package was delivered without additional fee.
I got my pcbs via DHL to Austria, no tax to pay. Shipping time vs shipping costs is also incredible. Ordered some on Feb 26th with regular shipping and upgraded shipping to DHL on another order. Shipping vie DHL took about 4 days, regular ones arrived after 40 days.
Won´t think twice the next time when I order.
philipp
DHL try charging a "customs processing fee" or "quarantine inspection fee" in Australia which is pure profit for them. I say "try charging" because you can refuse to pay - they bill you AFTER you receive the goods <duh>. Customs say that unless DHL can produce the relevant documentation you shouldn't pay the fee, and AQIS say you shouldn't pay the quarantine inspection fee unless DHL can produce the quarantine inspection number. So the $25-$45 fee they try to levy on recipients of small packets and parcels is just their extra profit grab. You need to ring them and ask for the customs documentation or AQIS inspection number which they invariably "cannot find" and then generously "waive the fee" :)
I avoid DHL like the plague and always choose FEDEX who've never yet tried to levy these extra profit fees on any overseas package I've been sent.
DHL have charged me on both orders I've had sent with them.
I can't remember the exact rules but we get charged both VAT and Import Duty. One has a threshold (£18 AFAIR) and the other technically is payable in all cases. Most carriers will let low-value parcels through regardless, DHL appear to treat things like PCBs as being for business use rather than personal use in all cases so enforce charges. They also use a very unfavourable $ to £ exchange rate.
They have a flat £12 'handling fee' where they administer these charges. One order was sizeable so I needed to pay something like £25. The other was just a single set of 10x10 boards so practically no duty to pay, so the admit charge swamped the actual amount owed.
Personally, I treat it as an extra cost to get the boards quickly - after all, the cost to use DHL isn't massively more than the post cost but is much, much quicker. If there was a way to avoid it I'd be happy but I can live with it.
Just got billed £18 by DHL. After querying it because they didn't charge last time I used them for a similar parcel they said that any duty under £5 was not charged but over that it was the actual import tax plus their £10 handling fee, although I think they called it something else.
Anyway this would explain why some people are paying DHL and others are not.
There is no duty payable on Australian imported goods with a value under $A 1,000 at least until July 2017 when the low-value exemption is abolished (see http://www.pitcher.com.au/news/gst-be-i ... -australia (http://www.pitcher.com.au/news/gst-be-imposed-imports-low-value-goods-australia)).
Here in Canada FedEx, UPS, and DHL all charge "clearance fees". DHL is the least costly. There are no tariffs on PCBs and electronic components from China, just 5% tax which can be waived if under $20 for "low value shipments" (which is why packages sent by post to Canada have no duties or taxes). It makes no difference if going to a person or business (but business can be cheaper).
DHL charges a brokerage fee, a fee for converting from USD to CAD, and a clearance fee. So instead of a $2 or so dollars of HST you end up paying >$20. FedEx and UPS are worse.
Canada Customs (CBSA) does everything possible to help the courier companies. They don't care about collecting taxes on low value shipments, yet allow the courier companies to force customers -- who already paid for services -- to pay more when no payments are necessary. It's a cash-grab. I get several small shipments per month, and these cash grabs are costing me more than $1000 a year.
I self-clear, and recently filed and application with the CBSA to be "secured" which will let me pay duties and taxes at the end of the month and on-line instead of per shipment and at the nearest CBSA office. That should be coming into effect soon and hopefully it will makes things cheaper/easier.
I added a few new FedEx options, they seem expensive. Added PostNL registered post.
UPS does not currently seem like an option from our logistics supplier.
Had the same problem here in Italy, but i've investigate it a bit further..
I had to pay 41€ for taxes and dhl fees for a 25$ order! This is due to the changes made to the invoice by the new site.
Before the upgrade only the cost of the pcb was reported in the invoice, making it below the 22€ limit for import duties, now the invoice include the shipping costs and the price is above the limit.
By the way this would not be a problem (i don't want to fraud italian taxes) but Italian duties (though DHL) added to my invoice 41€ of "transport fees" because it was not indicated in the invoice! I was unable to explain that the "DHL Shipping costs" ARE in effect "trasport fees" and they added an evaluated 41€ of value making the total price 63€.
Asking for more clarifications they told me that the sender should have labelled the dhl shipping as "Freight costs" so that they would not add an extra fee to the invoice and i would have to pay 5€ + 13€ for dhl = 18€.
So i'm asking: could we revert to the old invoice (specifying only the pcb costs?)
Thanks for your feedback, I'm really sorry that happened. I will change it to "Freight costs" immediately. The flip side of the problem is if I don't include that, then EU customs will add an arbitrary shipping (41 for you, 100 for sjaak). Maybe I can add an option to opt in or out of that? It seems like something that varies wildly by country and you'd be best off choosing how to include the freight on the invoice. Maybe you could even customize the line item text such as "Freight costs" or whatever?
Hello Ian,
both seems a good idea, an option to let it out of the invoice sound great.
Hello Ian,
i've to make a pcb, would you be able to modify the invoice?
The invoice will read "Freight Costs" as you described above, I already pushed a fix.
[quote author="ian"]I added a few new FedEx options, they seem expensive. Added PostNL registered post.
UPS does not currently seem like an option from our logistics supplier.[/quote]
Are PostNL tracking numbers available over at dirtypcb.com, maybe after few days?
Kind regards
Hi all,
I'm from Italy and I'm using the DirtyPCBs service since some years and I'm very satisfied of it.But in my last order I had an issue, I chose "DHL China" as shipping option (this is the first time since I always opted for airmail).The PCBs arrived after some days but I had to pay custom duties for a value which is nearly the cost of the order.The order was $35.95 and I paid 23.57 euro (roughly $27) for custom duties.Now I have to place another order so I wonder how I can avoid this to happen again (I want obviously a faster shipping with DHL).Is it possible to declare in the attached commercial invoice only the cost of the service (16.95 for the protopack) excluding shipping?Thanks.
P.S.
Is the DHL Hong Kong option the same of China one?
For my personal experience is that DHL don't know the shipping cost and assumes this to be 100USD (which is their gross price for shipping to EU). If you send in the invoice as you can download from the site before they deliver the package they can adjust the customs. Downside they can not deliver it to your address but to a nearby parcelhub.. Because the can't tell the driver the amount dutie has changed..
to me a lot of bullshit in order to make it inaccessible for hobbiest, but if you know the way it is doable. For me when I receive the text that something is heading to me and the customs-duty is due, I directly send an email to them with the correct invoice and ask them to adjust the duties..
I posted it before but here I blogged about it: http://smdprutser.nl/blog/dhl-dyscalcul ... dling-fee/ (http://smdprutser.nl/blog/dhl-dyscalculia-what-do-you-get-for-15-eur-handling-fee/)
I recently tried FedEx to see if they were any better than DHL. Wasn't a great experience...
Firstly, their service seems a lot slower than DHL - they say 2-5 days but it seemed to take forever for anything to happen once they'd picked the parcel up and it was actually 6 working days before delivering.
Worst problem was that they delivered the parcel, then demanded a payment for duty. DHL always tell you the duty due first so if there is anything wrong you can query it before accepting the parcel. Fedex don't give you this option - you've already accepted it (and sort of hoped you've not been charged) then they hit you with a massively inflated bill you've got no way to query.
DHL also have a much better payment system - Fedex don't have any online option, you have to ring up and pay over the phone.
Went back to DHL for my latest order (thanks to Bernadette for sorting this) and the billing was seamless and delivery much quicker. Won't be going Fedex again. Don't mind a slower delivery if the import costs are cheaper but slow delivery and higher charges don't appeal.
So the conclusion I think I am reading into all of this is.....
If we select post, it may take up to two months but there will likely be no extra charges.
If we select either DHL of Fedex, we can expect their price to double with extra fees.
Thus for fast delivery the delivery cost will be at least four times as expensive as slow (
(and likely to match the cost of the boards)
T
It haven't had any crazy fees as I've had in the past with some other couriers.