Customs Form: 1 or 3 pages?

[treadstone68]

I ship about 95% of my items from Canada to the US, and print my shipping labels through ebay probably at the same rate.  There is the odd time that I print the shipping lable and it takes up the whole 8.5x11 page... meaning one half is the shipping lable, and the other half is a seperate customs form (rather than being a small box being part of the shipping label).  My question is HOW can I tell ahead of time if the customs form will be the "half page" flavour?  When it is the half page size, I print that half three times and put all 3 in a make-shift ziploc pouch on the side of the box, but this can put you over one of the weight thresholds as I measured that the pouch and the documents weigh about 42 grams.

A bit un-nerving at times when you are close to the limit of the next weight/price threshold.  There was one time I used the exact same HS code but for a collectible teacup I got the regular half-page sized shipping label, but the next time around with the SAME HS CODE (although heavier item), I was given the customs form box as the half-page version.  

This is the one question I have that prevents me from self-proclaiming myself as a shipping expert!  LOL.

[ricarmic]

I am not 100% sure of your situation because I'm a stamps on the box kinda guy but:

If it is a small packet (including tracked), there's only one postal label has everything on it.

If it is expedited or expresspost parcel, there's two postal labels, ones a customs form, ones the other stuff.

[mrdutch1001]

Although I have not the experiences you are encountering...perhaps because I have adjusted all the settings on the printer, to print out exactly what and how I want the label to be printed...(BTW, I rarely use HS codes for my USA destined packages & have had no issues printing any labels and I print out just 1 copy of the label for the package, but I do retain a copy of the label for my own record-keeping)... other than that frustrating non-working  part about being able to insert the actual origin country of the item>which is a known problem for the past year or more, no label printing issues...