Overseas shipping is becoming more of a mishmash than ever. Sometimes an item coming from France takes a few weeks, pushing a full month. Somehow Dehillerin is able to deliver in under a week. Sometimes the cost of shipping makes an item prohibitively expensive, almost the cost of the item, but I just bought a French frying pan that came with free shipping. The tracking function for things originating in France is often close to worthless, especially if there is a handoff between shippers.
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I recently had a good experience with a medical supply place in Canada (not technically overseas I guess, but over some lakes), and a bad experience with a clothing, home goods place in China.
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It seems to take a very long time to get out of Hong Kong, longer than from the rest of China. Hmmmm.
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Very unusual for overseas shipping to be free ā what was the site?
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Some of the products can only be bought from oversea. Sometime the cost become prohibitively expensive, but sometime it is cheaper than buying it in USA. I bought this steamer, and it would have cost me twice as much if I buy this in USA.
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Frenchcoppercookware on eBay. I got a 24cm frying pan with iron handle and 2mm thickness. The tin is new. $150 with free shipping sounded like a good deal.
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there are multiple āscenariosā in the āfrom overseasā shipping . . .
every package (except via postal services) send to the US requires a broker, who does the paperwork for US Customs to āclearā the package, which then gets lost in US Customs examinations/clearance.
UPS, Fedex, DHL, etc etc - are all subject to these issues.
thence the ābig packageā goes to a domestic āagentā who opens,breaks down and reships/remails the items from the US to the US . . .
this avenue entails a lot of āwasted timeā
because sending lots of small packages via postal services is horrendously more expensive . . .
many āimportersā - especially the Chinese sources - take orders, wait to bundle them into one big āCustoms packageā - to spread the cost of import brokers/fees/etc over larger orders.
it take for flipping ever for all that to happen.
most āpopularā companies import big batches of āstuffā to an agent - in or out of a Foreign Trade Zone - and altho they may mislead the buyer into thinking it is coming from āoverseasā - it isnāt.
Darto is one such supplier - they offer āfree shippingā - and they are honest&upfront about it - they āimportā tons of product en masse, and ship from a USA destination.
had an offer to become a Bourgeat source - same deal - tons of pots shipped en masse to me, I advertise/sell from a domestic location . . .
the government will have its cut - by agent or by USPS rates.
On the other hand, isnāt there a like import tax once the shipment is above ~$800? Or is that only per customer, not per shipment, so I can have over $800 in a shipment as long as each customer products are below $800?
thereās like several thousand pages of duties thingies - this is not a simple topic . . .
for a consolidated package/parcel, there is no recognition of ācustomer ordersā
itās āhereās a box/pallet/skid/containerā with $$ dollars of goods in it, and hereās the breakdown of those items by import class . . .
I have a return that has been stuck in customs/Hangzhou in China since April 15th. I was a sucker and finally took the bait of these fetching PJās that danced across every screen after I looked at the website. They offered $5, then$10 to not return them, after threatening me with how much it would cost and how long it would take, but at that point, I wasnāt having it. And to add insult to injury, I also got āphishedā, or whatever itās called now when you click on a text saying your package is being held.
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So sorry.
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Customs warehouses are totally legit solutions and they exist literally all over the world.
Goods are shipped to a warehouse (usually close to a port and/or airport) and held until they are sold. The taxes are then calculated on the individual orders.
I worked for a couple of companies that had themā¦its to make logistics faster and easier for the customer, and eases the financial burden on the seller (but not by a huge amountā¦the warehouses arent cheap)
Its also far easier to ship 6 pallets or a full container of something than it is to ship 300 small shipments of those goods.
Come to think of it I have had some bad experience with a eBay seller from China.
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I wanted to share another chapter of this story. While I did get a refund, the following showed up at my door yesterday! Apparently the return was refused!
A very long return address (and list of stipulations) that USPS struggled to make work.
This package cost me $47.00 in shipping to return!
I still like the look of the pajamas but aside from the fact that the large is smaller than any adult I know, I really want to better appreciate the true cost of buying from companies like this.
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What do you mean by the true cost of buying from companies like this? e.g oversea?
āLike thisā means some companies overseas; particularly China.
Iāve been seeing stories about things like stolen intellectual property, and the pros and cons of ātariffsā, and I want to better understand the working conditions. I assume lower prices come at a cost to someone!
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I once auctioned off a rare LP record on eBay to a bidder whose address on eBay was San Antonio TX; I quoted him shipping based upon that address. When the PayPal payment came in, the PayPal address to which I had to ship him the LP was in Malaysia; big difference in cost. The seller was then non-responsive to any messages. In order to avoid any negative feedback, etc., I shipped him the LP anyway as I did make some money, even considering the circumstances.
Valuable lesson. Didnāt make the same mistake again.
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Got it. Stolen IP is a problem for the business. For me as a consumer, I have seen false advertisements. Unfortunately, more so from certain foreign countries than others. For example, I have never had any false advertised purchase from Japan.
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A few years ago I did a web search for anybodywho might still have a SwissGold coffee filter hanging around their shop. I found one company: a coffee shop in Norway! They had a few of the Melitta-style #2 SwissGold filters still in stock. The shipping was more than the cost of the filter! When I said I didnāt care, they asked if I wanted to buy more than one filter, to offset the cost of shipping. 
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When Shakespeare and Company, a venerable English-language bookshop in Paris, was in severe financial distress a few years ago, there was a world-wide effort to save them by buying stuff. The 15 euro tote bag I got ended up costing around $45, after shipping and duty. I do get comments about it now and then.
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