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From: greg@olivee.UUCP (Greg Paley)
Newsgroups: net.travel
Subject: Re: Warning re Shipping Stuff Home
Message-ID: <475@olivee.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Sep-85 13:26:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: olivee.475
Posted: Tue Sep  3 13:26:03 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 02:52:48 EDT
References: <7600004@petrus.UUCP>
Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
Lines: 28

> I would like to pass on a warning to people who are considering
> buying things abroad and having them shipped home.
> 
> In London we bought two sports jackets (about $200).  We naively
> asked to have them shipped.  We paid about $20 to the store,
> AND an unexpected 18% duty when the package was delivered.
> If we had hand-carried the jackets, there would have been no $20 fee,
> and no duty (we brought back less than $400-per-person).
> 
> In Paris it was even worse--the store fee for $250 worth of stuff was $45.
> 
> On the bright side, we did not have to lug large packages across
> Europe, and the Value Added Tax was deducted on-the-spot, avoiding
> paperwork and delays.  On the other hand, we could have bought another
> suitcase and hired a lot of porters to carry it with the $150 we wasted.

This doesn't always work out so badly.  My wife and I bought a set of
Rosenthal china in Munich (from Haertle - on the passageway between
Stachus and Marienplatz).  Not only was the price about 1/3 of what
we would have paid at S.Christian of Copenhagen in San Francisco, but
they sent the china in a fairly large number of small (well packaged)
individual packages each of which they declared as having a value of
$25.00.  U.S. customs opened one of these and decided it was actually
worth $100.00, therefore charging us duty on it, but the rest came
duty-free.  This was also a case where we could not have possibly
brought it with us in our already bulging suitcases.

	- Greg Paley