benjoshua wrote:
Yes, you have to declare the contents value on the customs form in the US.  However, I buy stuff cheap and sell for a higher price (what a concept!).  My question is, do you have to state the price you sold it/them for or can you write the price you bought it/them for as well?

Actually, you can determine the value on your own. The purchase price is pretty much irrelevant, but I generally use it as a guide. If I sold a PHB to someone in England for $20; I generally value the thing at around $35 to cover postage costs as well as the sales price. Hope that helps.

UK

No knives and rape by the postal service.

WTF is going on over there???

bbarsh wrote:If I sold a PHB to someone in England for $20; I generally value the thing at around $35 to cover postage costs as well as the sales price. Hope that helps.

For Canada customs, the cost of shipping is irrelevant, only the cost of the item is important.  Ebay and UPS are somewhat linked in that if you ship by UPS, they can look up the transaction and see how much the item and shipping are to charge the appropriate taxes.  Also you can appeal changes this way too without any paperwork being sent in.

I suppose that there might be a grey area between the value of an item vs the amount you bought it for but IMO the price you paid should be the value on the customs form.  I think you would have a hard time asking the post office for more money than is on the bill of sale.

Also, in Bbarsh's example, if I was charged customs, I would probably be pretty ticked at the seller and leave low DSRs (maybe not a neg though).  The limit for no hassle packages in Canada is about $20 so if the seller inflated the customs value to $35 (to include postage which isn't relevant) and then this package was flagged to get charged the $5 handling + upto 13% taxes, I would be a bit put off.  I could then submit the paperwork to get my money back but that is a hassle and would never have happened if the seller put the proper value on the customs form.  

I understand why sellers inflate the customs value but I have been screwed by this more than once and it some cases it leads to heated discussions and negative feedback.  Its interesting that in a couple of the cases, the sellers seem very strict in their listing to mention that they won't say the package is a gift because that would be false declaration and breaking the law but then they do it anyway by putting a false value - its all a bit hypocritical.  The example that burns me was a bunch of auctions for some Autoduel Quarterly magazines that I won for $1 each.  I was already pissed at the seller for charging a handling fee of $2 per auction and then the $5 worth of magazines was declared as $100 value when it came through customs and it wasn't even insured.

In general though, it is a rare case where I get charged customs on packages shipped by USPS to Canada regardless of declared value.  So far this year, I have had about 8 $100+ packages including the Adventure Danger & Dragons one (still a couple of sets left guys) which was $450+ and weighed 42 pounds - can't miss it.  I have had about 25 packages delivered but only been charged customs on 1 package which was a $35 dollar book.  I usually only ended up getting charged customs maybe 5 or 6 times a year on a few hundred parcels all selected at random.

bbarsh wrote:

Read my first post in the thread. I already suggested that. However, this will NOT protect you from neg feedback if the buyer is careful about his wording. They can hit you with any sort of generic language. Or simply just say nothing. Buyers have ZERO requirement in leaving negative feedback. What is the worst thing that could happen to them? We have seen sellers from this site get hit with negatives because their shipment arrives three days after the auction ended! Apparently, that particular buyer thought it should be there in two days...And exactly how did ebay help out? They didn't do a fucking thing.

I had a guy, a few years ago, email me every day after the auction ended asking when his Top Secret Box set was going to arrive. I told him it would take 3-5 days via parcel post and gave him the tracking number to prove I sent it the day after the auction ended. For whatever reason it arrived seven days after the auction ended. The day he got it, he left me a negative for slow shipping! I emailed the asshat and asked for an explaination, and he obliged saying the shipment was slow!!!!! I copied everything to ebay. They did nothing, citing the buyer had a right to leave his feedback even if it was stupid because he was telling the truth??? In short, they claimed his feedback was accurate and did not constitute a violation of ebay rules. In the same fucking email they "warned" me about leaving retalitory feedback. That is ebay.

In this particular case, Blackie is already screwed because I am pretty confident that he did not have the ebay verbage in his auction regarding international buyers who try to screw domestic sellers.

No, as Brian so eloquently stated, ebay's policy of telling sellers that we need to inform buyers that they shouldn't ask us, sellers, to break the law is patently idiotic.

Ebay's policy is to NOT remove a neg. They might as well come out and say it - which they practically have.

Not to mention a buyer is allowed to lie on feedback, I had this confirmed via a return email from ebay (I'll post it if I can find it). Basically, ebay said that they would rather allow someone to lie on feedback than interfere in the feedback "process".  This involved someone leaving me negative feedback and stating in the comments the item took 18 days to arrive, when I had postal confirmation the guy picked it up at the post office after 10 days.  Ebay pretty much said tough titties, we love the buyer more than you.  And they wonder why they are going straight down the toilet....



Mike B.

Blackmoor wrote:Ok so now this guy is saying he will leave negative feedback unles I pay back half the import duties and VAT.  That would be $84.00.

This has to be feedback extortion does it not?

Anyway I did report him to Ebay.

Here is a copy of his e-mail:

Hello,

Indeed it goes without saying that I would put negative comments on your rating if you do not make the effort to repay the money!



This was sent though the Ebay mail service as well.

Yep, that is in fact feedback extortion to a T based on Ebay's rules and is grounds for them to remove any negs he leaves.



ETA:

Here is Ebays feebback extortion policy:



http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/fee ... rtion.html