At 11:24 AM 12/26/98 -0500, Gary Reese wrote:
[snip]
>Anyone care to share tips on successful shipment of used OM equipment FROM
>Canada TO the USA, esp. item that have discontinued for more than 7 to 10
>years (if that has implications on their customs treatment)?
Gary:
I've shipped several items into the USA which were used Oly pieces. In
general, I've just used Canada Post, Air Mail, fully-insured. I've not found
that using couriers (UPS, Federal Express, Purolator Courier, etc.) speeds
things up -- if anything, they're slower, because their bureaucracy has to
interact with Canada or U.S. Customs bureaucracy. They're also more expensive,
by at least a factor of two. (I had one particular nightmare experience in the
opposite direction -- a shipper in the U.S. shipped stuff to me "priority U.S.
Postal Service" when I just told him to ship it regular USPS. It got waylaid
by Purolator Courier's ever-so-helpful-and-clueless customs clearance division
in Toronto [Purolator's the proxy for USPS Priority Mail in Canada], where it
sat for several weeks while they tried to figure out how to deliver it to a
P.O. box [postal officials will not sign for couriered items to Canadian P.O.
boxes]. It took four phone calls from me and the shipper, plus several FAXes,
to get those boneheads to release the stuff.)
Remember, folks, USPS Priority Mail is only *priority* IN THE U.S. -- once it
crosses a national border, all bets are off. Utterly. Using it to ship stuff
outside the U.S. will probably slow it down, and will definitely cost either
you or your buyer more money. The worst of both worlds.
But I digress. Back to your question.
For Customs purposes, I've filled out the declaration form as "non-commercial
transaction, [description of camera equipment], used value of $XX.xx CDN", and
left it at that. So far, all my recipients have had no problems. Shipping
time from Canada to the U.S. (or more accurately, Edmonton to the U.S.) appears
to be around five working days, during non-holiday seasons. I recently sent a
payment to someone in Washington State, who received it six working days after
I sent it. This was about two weeks ago -- ostensibly during the holiday rush.
Not great, but not bad.
Canada Customs doesn't seem to care as much about shipments leaving the country
as shipments coming into the country. By the by, if any of your Canadian
correspondents do *not* fill out the Customs declaration properly, U.S. Customs
will stop the package at the border, open and inspect, and then hold the
package while they try to contact either the sender or the receiver for
information on the value of the contents.
One more thing: NAFTA rules state that there is no duty on used camera
equipment travelling in transactions between Canada and the U.S. Don't let
Customs slap you with duty on the item in question -- it's supposedly forbidden
under NAFTA. If Customs does do so, insist on your rights under NAFTA -- you
probably got a clueless newbie in Customs who thought that "well, the item in
question was made in Japan [or wherever], so it's required by NAFTA to hit it
with duty." That's only true of new items which are being imported into the
North American Free Trade Zone -- used items have already paid the NAFTA fees
(or have been grandfathered).
Hope this helps -- and hope you're thinking of getting a sweet little piece of
Oly glass...
Garth
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