So you feel it takes 18CHF worth of time/labour to handle a package? At that price they cant be doing a large amount of packages per day... and if they are, please tell me who to contact so that I can start a private company for which I will charge 17chf for such a service...

As the Swiss postal market is free for all items above 100 g you are free to found your own company and compete with the ones already existing (DHL, TNT, FedEx, Swiss Post, UPS, etc.).

As you can see in the following link the fee imposed by government for handling customs is CHF 1 per kilogramme (higher rate for Alcohol, Tobacco, food and textiles) plus Swiss VAT.

http://www.ezv.admin.ch/zollinfo_pri...x.html?lang=en

Any fees that are higher then mentioned above are imposed by a private postal company (e.g. DHL, UPS, TNT, Swiss Post, FedEx, etc.) and thus are issue to competition. This leaves us, as I have said before, with two obtions: either this fee is justified or the store (e.g. Amazon) is not trying hard enough to get a good deal for its customers. In the second case the store could be forced to look for a better deal if its customers would demand it more strongly.

It is from ALL countries into Switzerland. You should have told the supplier to declare (CN22-label) a value of € 35.-- and it would have been FREE

Reality is that the CHF SwissPost charges IS lower than what FedEx, DHL, or UPS charge!

So, remember, when you buy abroad, either order such that a shipment does not exceed CHF 62 in value, or order a large enough shipment that the CHF 18 (or more) is insignificant.

Tom

So where is my Friend 'AYB' he would probably say spending below 62 chf is milking the system.

With the very much stronger CHF, the 62chf limit allows the free import of items that previously would have been taxed.

Much as I hate to disappoint you: both I choose my friends carefully, and I have no view on the 62chf threshold.

What does concern me however is the disproportionate size of these import admin charges imposed by customs clearance agents. The point is: they are not explained and not within the control of the recipient. There no commercial relationship between the recipient of the package and the charge - except that he must pay it. I am interested to know how such behaviour can be avoided. Can one insist that the overseas retailer does not use a particular agent or that these costs are disclosed up front ?

Your thoughts ?

AYB

I used to buy loads of stuff on Ebay, however for lower priced products it was always more expensive so I stopped. Above 300 euro it's works unless you get hit with the 35chf charge because they sent it express.

Of course anyone with a holiday home, girlfriend , relatives etc living over the border could have everything shipped there, I would not even dream of doing that myself. Somebody even linked a commercial enterprise over the border for those people who want to 'milk' the system.

Best FMF

what do you mean by milking the system and "even linked"? it comes across that you find this unacceptable? unless i am seriously missing your sarcasm

Please keep up.

AYB

Hi Rob,

It was trying to make AYB smile on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
To only import items costing 61.99CHF would be a risky strategy as the customs does not update exchange rates every day, I think they use the average of the previous week, so it's not a sport for the risk averse.

Best FMF

ah said the blind man.....

TBH i just ask the sender to put a low value on the customs label and not to include an invioce..... works for me every time, but in reality if you buy anything from ebay etc the sellers normally put a low value anyway.

i am glad to read this thread. I recently bought a dvd from Amazon.de and got charged the same extra charge. But, for me, the problem was the the dvd cost 35 euro and Amazon.de put 70 euro as the value. First I was mad at the Post but then i was mad at amazon. It's been sitting on my to-do pile but I think i am going to send a nasty letter to amazon now! thanks for sharing your complaint!

I agree that it is a total ripoff the charges for the Post. My folks sent my daughter a bunch of my old toys from when I was little in a medium sized box. They are toys that are like 25 years old. Stuffed animals, books etc. No value basically. The USPS charged her $56 to send it here (expensive, but cheaper than buying a bunch of new crap) When the box arrived, the Post charged me 30chf!!! What the he'll is that? It had no value, so it wasn't VAT or duty.

Conversely, I sent some Swiss stuff back to my teacher friends in Florida and it cost about 50chf to send (similar to how much it cost to send stuff to CH) the difference was when it got to the States THEY DIDN'T PAY ANYTHING TO RECEIVE IT!! Some things about Switzerland I will never understand.

The shop you are ordering from (e.g. Amazon.de) has made a contract with the shipping company to send the items you ordered to your place. Thus you have a commercial relationship with the people who issue this fee (via the store).

To avoid paying this fee you have to find a store that has made a better deal with their shipping company, or just stop buying there. If the customers do so the online shops will be forced to renegotiate their contracts with their shipping companies. That is how free markets work.

It is the online stores that are responsible if this fees are to high. If Migros for example buys Coke for a price that is much too high, which results in exorbitant prices for Coke in Migros, you would not blame Coca Cola for selling their product for too much, but rather blame Migros for being too expensive (In a capitalist economic system anybody is supposed to maximize their profit. In this example Coca Cola is doing this by selling its product for the highest possible price. Migros is not doing this, because they do not try hard enough to get the lowest possible price. Thus Migros is at fault.).

For online stores it is exactly the same. The delivery is a product they purchase from a shipment company and then sell to you, if you make an order.

As most of the postal companies are actually international companies (DHL = German, TNT = Dutch, UPS = American, FedEx = American) you can't blame the Swiss to be resposabele. As the Swiss postal market is free for all items above 100 gramms. The shipping companies are free to claim whatever fee they want (market economy). It is up to their clients (e.g. online stores, individual people) to eithter accept this fees. negotiate better terms or change to a company that offers better terms.

As most shipping companies operating in Switzerland have their headquarters elsewhere this fees most likely are not decided in Switzerland, but in Germany, the Netherlands or the United States of America. You should rather blame the foreigners .

Amazon.de for example is using DHL although the delivery is delegated by DHL to Swiss Post (again a contract between two private companies).

As I have stated above the fee issued by Switzerland for dealing with customs is actually quite reasonable.
It is CHF 1 per kilogram. If you consider that a heavy parcel actually needs more work (i.e. more difficult to lift, to transport and to store) and that expect if you are ordering furniture the parcels hardly will be heavier then one or two kilograms this fee is really reasonable.

Any fee that exceeds CHF 1 /kg + VAT is imposed unto you by a private company and are determined by the market:
source: http://www.ezv.admin.ch/zollinfo_pri...x.html?lang=en

That's what most of your VAT was charged for

What dvd was it that cost 55 EURO ??


I am guessing it was a box set perhaps??



cheers
SC

I got a parcel on April delivered by DHL. Four months later, DHL sent me a bill to pay 60CHF for whatever tax. WTH.

Before replying to people and Bolding text, please get your facts straight.

Important info underlined in red:



yes Wikipedia is not the be-all-end-all of info, but there is no reason for someone to lie about it on wikipedia....

To me this means the government owned enterprise SwissPost is designated by the Swiss Government to handle all incoming mail coming from the worlds public mail system.

A VAT on imports is fine, but if they want to enforce the VAT so vigorously they shouldnt charge the recipient for their pedantic tirades....

It is true that Swiss Post is owned by goverment, but it is important that it is not run by goverment. It opperates like a private company according to the laws of the market (it does for example not reseave tax money, Swiss Post has to pay taxes as any other company). For me a company is private, although it is owned by the state, if it operates independently according to the laws of free market

Swiss Post may have the monopoly for all letters below 50g (the 100g I quoted earlier are outdated), but it has the obligation to serve even the most remote villages. This is something its competitors don't have to do, thus it has to be balanced in some way.

By the way is the American postal market even more restricted than the Swiss one. In the US all letters regardless of their weight (except express services) may only be delivered by government owned United States Postal Service.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Post...onopoly_status



It is simply not true that Swiss Post is handling all incoming mail, as the Swiss postal market is free for all items above 50g. So anybody can found a company and bring mail to Switzerland.
According to previous posts by other members privately owned companies such as FedEx even charge higher fees for handling customs then Swiss Post does.


Federal Law from April 30, 1997 on the Organisation of the federation’s post company (unfortunately it does not seem to be available in English):
http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/sr/c783_1.html

List of legal and natural persons with licence to offer postal service in Switzerland:
http://www.postreg.admin.ch/de/diens...essionaere.htm