HS CODES - ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE POTENTIAL CONFUSION FINDING THE CORRECT CODE

[forester_studios]

I have a book of sheet music which has a bid on it.  When the auction ends and the bidder sends payment which code should be used to ship it?

Tariff Schedule: 4901.00.00.00 - Printed books, brochures, leaflets and similar printed matter, whether or not in single sheets

Tariff Schedule: 4904.00.00.00 - Music, printed or in manuscript, whether or not bound or illustrated

Anyone else find this just a bit confusing? 

[recped]

The second one is more accurate but I'll tell you with 99.9% certainty that nobody cares!

[maggiebvintage2010]

490400 since it is music first, and not the written word, which is what 490100 is referring to.

[forester_studios]

Well the folks at customs might care and if packages start being returned because they didn't clear customs I'll bet a lot of sellers will care then!  Time will tell.

[rose-dee]

Another interesting point -- I just prepared an Xpresspost label tonight, entered the appropriate (I hope) code during the online label process, yet unless I'm really going blind I couldn't see the code printed anywhere on the Xpresspost label. 

I assume from this that the code pops up when the item is scanned at US Customs, otherwise what is the whole point? 

It would have been extremely helpful to have had a head's up a few days ago and an "FAQ" page about the HS codes and some useful links posted for sellers on the eBay Canada site.  Didn't they know this was coming?  Instead they've left us (as usual) to muddle around and figure it out amongst ourselves.  I'm really not impressed...

[forester_studios]

It just shows how little Canada post - Ebay - Paypal care about their customers.  You would think a simple mention of this on the Ebay announcements board a few weeks ago with info about where to get HS Codes could have avoided this mess.  However it seems these billion dollar companies have better things to do than serve their customers.

[lukey9]

I was just at the PO today and I was asking about the Codes and as of today they still don't have any thing on it or at least they are not talking. They are more concerned about the flack they are going to take on the increase in Stamp prices. Canada Post must work under the Mushroom theory keep you in the dark and feed the  to you. If Customs does in force there are going to be allot of Parcels returned and allot of unhappy people.

[nan*55]

As of Friday my local post master had never heard of a HS code 😞

[pjcdn2005]

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@forester_studios wrote:

Well the folks at customs might care and if packages start being returned because they didn't clear customs I'll bet a lot of sellers will care then!  Time will tell.

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I would be surprised if that happened. Very few packages get opened and when one does and customs thinks that the value is incorrect, they simply assess it at the new value...they don't send it back. 

[bits-n-pieces]

On Friday my post office ladies had not had any notification about this either. I hit the "label won't print" problem on Thursday night and as I have posted on several boards covering this topic, eventually found a Can Post phone c/s rep who knew the fix.

LEAVE OUT ALL THE DECIMALS in the HS code that you get on the CP website, then you can proceed with paying for and printing your label.

My astonishment at this new wrinkle sprung on us with no notice is not that it happened, but that no one at Canada Post actually bothered to try to print a label from the Paypal site.  If THEY HAD TESTED, it would have been apparent that there was a problem. They then could have advised Paypal to word the error message correctly to tell the user to omit the decimals.

That is sloppy and incompetent.

[forester_studios]

Talked to one employee at the Shoppers postal outlet last week.  He said since the codes started no one was able to print labels - He obviously had not heard about leaving out decimals when entering the number and he is usually pretty knowledgeable about postal info.  Talked to two employees at a different Shoppers CP outlet today and they had never heard of HS Codes.  Seems not only customers are in the dark, but a lot of employees too.  Pretty pathetic way to implement a major change.

[silentmobius]

Is this also for light packets to states/overseas? I mostly use the white customs form and I use stamps for my mailing, do i also have to add some sort of 'hs code number;? i dont want my items being returned because theres no silly code