Posting to Japan

shazspice

I sold an item on ebay to someone in Japan. It is a bag - do i need to send a custom form? This is my first overseas sale and im not sure what to do!!

slowen

shazspice wrote:

I sold an item on ebay to someone in Japan. It is a bag - do i need to send a custom form? This is my first overseas sale and im not sure what to do!!

The post office may ask you to complete a customs declaration which gets stuck onto the front of the parcel so that customs can see what the item is and the declared value, if the post office don't tell you to fill one in then I would not worry about it

Alfie_E

Posting internationally using Royal Mail isn’t much different to posting within the UK. See the bottom of Keep in touch for what Royal Mail will let you can send through them. Yes, you need a customs label. See the Royal Mail’s Local customs page. Ignore the downloadable CN22, as you can get nicely printed self-adhesive labels from your post office. The only extra things you need to do is make sure it says “Small Packet” on it, has an airmail sticker if you want to send it by airmail, and has a customs label to send outside the EU. The member of counter staff in the post office should make sure everything is correct, when they accept it. Just tell them it’s a small packet to go either airmail or surface mail to Japan. You probably want to send it airmail, as surface mail is painfully slow, and often results in annoyed eBay buyers.

Big heavy items would have to go through their Parcelforce division, or a courier company. For large or heavy items, Royal Mail and Parcelforce are often undercut by the prices offered by other couriers.

If your bag has any significant value, you’ll probably want to do the international equivalent of recorded delivery. This is called International Signed For. You can get a combined form and label the post office. It’s pretty similar to the orange Recorded Signed For form and label you would use for UK post, but offers compensation up to £500. This may also be acceptable as evidence in any PayPal dispute. However, the PayPal website is contradictory on this point, and I’m sure other posters can confirm how fickle PayPal can be in making their decisions.

Tribal

I thought others would have said this. When posting abroad, I always tick the "gift" part. This helps the buyer. Also, mentally calculate how much you would get for the item at a garage/car boot sale. That is the amount you put in "value" This is for customs only, to save your buyer being zapped. Insure it for whatever as you wish, this is nothing to do with customs, they don't know what it is insured for.A friend had stuff sent from overseas. Customs tried to charge her for OLD CLOTHES!! The sender had written how much the clothes COST, not "value" (which was almost zip, except to her.) Hope this helps!

Mr_Proctalgia

How are you going to write the address so the local postie-san can read it. With a plaint blush????

slowen

Tribal wrote:

I thought others would have said this. When posting abroad, I always tick the "gift" part. This helps the buyer. Also, mentally calculate how much you would get for the item at a garage/car boot sale. That is the amount you put in "value" This is for customs only, to save your buyer being zapped. Insure it for whatever as you wish, this is nothing to do with customs, they don't know what it is insured for.A friend had stuff sent from overseas. Customs tried to charge her for OLD CLOTHES!! The sender had written how much the clothes COST, not "value" (which was almost zip, except to her.) Hope this helps!

Even items marked as "gift" can be stopped and checked by customs and with the value if you put a lower value on the parcel and it goes missing then you can only claim for the value that you have declared on the parcel so it's not really worth putting a lower value on the parcel in case the worst happens then your out of pocket and also if customs feel that you have undervalued the item that can slap charges onto the parcel

Alfie_E

Mr_Proctalgia wrote:

How are you going to write the address so the local postie-san can read it. With a plaint blush????

It’s not a problem. The official languages for international post are French and English. These means addresses in “Roman” script. The Universal Postal Union website gives the official address layout for Japan for international post.

I would imagine shazspice is going to take on trust whatever address the buyer gives, printing it out directly from the computer. And, as the buyer managed to cope with an English-language eBay listing, I’d imagine that they’re going to be able to provide their address in Romanized form.

If the buyer wants to provide their address in the normal Japanese writing system of kanji and kana in addition to its Romanized form, the UPU’s Formatting an international address shows how to write the same address in two different scripts.

Tribal wrote:

When posting abroad, I always tick the "gift" part. Also, mentally calculate how much you would get for the item at a garage/car boot sale. That is the amount you put in "value".

Please, fill in any customs declaration fully and accurately. Do not declare it as a gift. Put the final value of the eBay auction as the value on the declaration, as this accurately reflects the item’s value. Look at it this way: if the roles were reversed, and they were sending from Japan to you in the UK with a false declaration, then it’s you, as the importer, who could be liable for any false declaration. I don’t know what Japanese customs law is like specifically, but, I believe, it’s even stricter than ours.

Mr_Proctalgia

I was aware of the postal rules but as a person that has actually lived in Greece, Cyprus, Germany, Holland, France and a couple of other countries I am well aware that where there is a home delivery system it can go spectacularly wrong. (When I lived in Greece more so) I found it helpful that when a language permitted it was better to use upper case only.

My post was meant to be tongue in cheek BTW..

Alfie_E

Mr_Proctalgia wrote:

My post was meant to be tongue in cheek BTW..

Ok, I got the “paint blush” joke. But, you could have explained why the rest of it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, or put in some smilies. It wasn’t exactly reassuring, when shazspice has written “This is my first overseas sale and im not sure what to do!!”

Contains_Mild_Peril

My local PO often marked the "gift" box on the customs form without asking, so I didn't argue. Be especially careful if your item could possibly be mistaken for a letter, that it is sent as a Small Packet. Letters, for some bizarre reason, are much more expensive to send abroad. If the PO assistant asks if there's a letter inside, just say no - you're allowed a short note relating to the parcels contents in a Small Packet, but if you admit it contains a letter, they might question you about it and maybe even argue with you.