Sending a Used iPhone to the USA for the first time - anything I should be aware of?

[clee_1848]

I'm selling my used iPhone 6 to a buyer in the USA. I'm a bit nervous as this is my first time sending something (especially an iPhone) outside of Canada.

Is there anything I need to keep in mind before sending it off? These questions are probably  stupid...but

What would I mark the reason for export as on the customs form? Gift or Sale? Is the declared value exactly what the seller paid for it?

Thanks in advance for your answers and reply 🙂

[momcqueen]

Congrats on a significant sale.

1. Pack carefully
2. Dispatch within your handling time
3. Use tracking. Signature Confirmation is only required for transactions that exceed $825 CAD
4. Mark it as Merchandise
5. Declare the value to be what the buyer paid for the item instead, not counting shipping

Please don’t hesitate to ask any other questions that you might have.

[femmefan1946]

You get a discount on shipping if you use Shippo labels.

You will need to sign up for a Small Business Solutions card on the Canada Post website. It takes seconds, and Canada Post doesn't care if you are 'really' a business or not.

https://www.canadapost.ca/web/en/kb/details.page?article=get_a_commercial_cus&cattype=kb&cat=account...

https://goshippo.com/

[clee_1848]

Thanks, this is really helpful! 🙂

Do you know if the buyer will have to pay any customs/duty? I've warned the buyer that this might happen and that I wasn't sure how much he/she would have to pay.

It's weird, because sometimes when I buy something from the States, I don't have to pay any customs/duty, while other times, I do?

[clee_1848]

Great! Thanks for the tip 🙂

[femmefan1946]

Americans have a duty-free allowance of around $800 (~$1000CDN).

In any case, duty and sales taxes are the responsibility of the buyer.

EBay gave us some buumpf we sellers could attach to our Descriptions explaining this to our customers.

If your items are going to be high value, it is worth adding it to yours.

Import duties, taxes and charges are not included in the item price or shipping charges. These charges are the buyer's responsibility. Please check with your country's customs office to determine what these additional costs will be prior to bidding/buying.

[femmefan1946]

I wrote this a while back for a similar question about Canadian duty and taxes:

A very large percentage of eBay sellers are not registered to remit taxes to the Canadian government.

A Canadian seller who is registered will include the appropriate tax on your invoice.

If you are buying from a Canadian seller, most will have a note in their Description and Terms of Sale. Read it.

Where it gets tricky is with foreign sellers.

Any import valued over $20CDN (~$16USD) is supposed to be assessed for duty and sales taxes. These will be paid to the Canadian government.

The shipper is also allowed to charge a 'service fee' (which has various names) for wrangling the item through Customs. The ones we see most often are the $9.95 charge by Canada Post, and the ~$5 charge included in GSP import fees.

If the seller uses a courier like UPS or FedEx, you WILL be charged the duty, Sales Taxes , and their service fee. They are legally bound to do this. And their fees start at $20+.

If the seller ships by the postal system, a low value item will probably not be assessed, because the CBSA public servants realize that it would cost the taxpayer more to collect than would be collected. When Canada Post delivers your low value* item, there will be no duty or tax. This is good sense if not quite legal.

If the US or UK seller ships by the Global Shipping program, you WILL be charged import fees when you pay.

So look at how the seller is shipping.

If he uses the GSP, you WILLbe charged duty, tax and a service fee, before the seller ships.

If the seller uses the postal system, you may be charged duty, tax, and a service fee on your doorstep.

If the seller uses a courier, you WILL be charged duty, tax, and a service fee on your doorstep.

And yes, all those fees are legal.

And yes, the shipping company is turning the money over to the Canadian government.

And yes, we all hate it.

And yes, $20 is a ridiculously low duty free allowance.

*More or less under $100Cdn (~$80USD).

[momcqueen]

---

@clee_1848 wrote:
Thanks, this is really helpful! 🙂

Do you know if the buyer will have to pay any customs/duty? I've warned the buyer that this might happen and that I wasn't sure how much he/she would have to pay.

It's weird, because sometimes when I buy something from the States, I don't have to pay any customs/duty, while other times, I do?

---

The de minimus for goods coming into the USA from Canada is much, much higher for Americans than it is for us. We're limited by the Canadian government to $20 CAD on most items sent by mail but Americans get up to $800 USD duty-free if memory serves me. That limit is different for each country in the world, set by their own government. Some online ecommerce sites require the seller to prepay duty for the buyer but ebay is not one of them. That's on the buyer, your listings should probably state that if you want to sell outside Canada and the USA. 

[clee_1848]

Thanks so much @momcqueen, this is very helpful information!

[momcqueen]

You're very welcome. This might also be useful for future reference. 

https://global-express.org/assets/files/Customs%20Committee/de-minimis/GEA-overview-on-de-minimis_Ap...

It's a bit out of date, currency conversion-wise. 

[clee_1848]

Unfortunately... I ended up cancelling the purchase. The buyer said he was having problems paying and there was an error message when I clicked on the specific item. I'm not exactly sure what the issue was (maybe it was because I listed it on ebay.ca and he bought it from ebay.com)?

I think I'll stick to selling items in Canada for now 🙂

[momcqueen]

I'm sorry to hear that. What error message did you get? Ebay is universal so it doesn't matter what ebay the buyer is registered to so long as shipping is enabled to that location. Other users reported trouble with payments yesterday too. I would probably have asked the buyer to try again tomorrow.

[clee_1848]

Oh I had no idea sellers were having issues! To be honest, I think he was being a bit sketchy. First he claimed his payment wasn't going through, second he said he couldn't see the 'pay now' link and then the final straw was him asking me to cover the shipping cost.  

I even asked for his e-mail address so I could said a PayPal invoice, but he didn't give it to me. 

To top it off... he left me negative feedback even though we mutually agree to cancel the order. Now my rating went from 100% to 90% because of this one experience 😞 

[zee-chan]

EBay doesn’t allow emails to be sent via eBay messages so he wouldn’t have been able to give it to you.

[ricarmic]

Regarding the negative, I want to say that you did an excellent job with your response, it was factual and non-confrontational.

Generally speaking feedbacks don't count for much anymore, but I myself do look at them when I am buying, and what I exactly look for is how the seller responds to negs and neutrals. Poor responses suggest that seller will also be a problem for me if there are any problems with my purchase. Professional responses suggest the seller will be professional if I have a problem if I buy something from them.

If I was interested in buying something from you and saw your response to the negative, I would have no problem buying from you because of how you responded.

[momcqueen]

I agree with ric, you handled that negative very well with your response, but I'm not sure you deserve the negative to start with. (You seem to me like a conscientious new seller, not hot-headed or knee-jerk at all, from the basis of how you communicate here which can be very telling, let me assert.)

Depending on how much this experience with the negative may sour you on selling, you might want to inquire about asking for its removal with the Feedback Specialists in ebay Customer Service (sellers get very mixed results with that) or bringing it forward to the Weekly Chat with ebay on Wednesdays and speaking to Tyler about it. He's an ebay employee, proper, whereas the rest of us are volunteer smartie-pants.

If ebay can confirm there were actual problems with the checkout process (as other users were lamenting yesterday) you might be eligible for removal of the red dot, but that would take some digging to get to and the Customer Service Reps aren't always motivated to do that. There's also the issue with the buyer trying to wiggle out of postage, technically the terms of the sale are set at purchase and the buyer cannot go asking for freebies afterwards without violating policy. So for him to violate policy and then neg you for being disinclined to allow that..... between that and the potential for there to be a ticket already open for payment problems..... 

I'm going to stick my neck out and tag tyler@ebay to see if there might be something here that he can help you with. 

In the meantime, report your buyer for policy violations. It should be easy to find the link to do that, it's in a couple of different places but write back if you need help finding it. 

It's up to interpretation whether this was a 'demand for a discount' or a 'demand for additional services''

[clee_1848]

Thanks for letting me know! I had no idea... another lesson learned!

[clee_1848]

Thanks @ricarmic - that makes me feel a lot better!

[clee_1848]

Thanks @mommcqueen! I really appreciate all your advice and recommendations during my first attempt to sell outside of Canada.

I'll think about opening an upaid item case. I don't know if I should give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe the system was down and that we did mutually agree to cancel the order. (I also got the sense that there might've been a language barrier as well...). I might reach out the Customer Service Reps to see if they're willing to help in the meantime and will hopefully connect with Tyler as well.

[zee-chan]

*DON'T* open the unpaid item case, because the transaction is already cancelled. The unpaid item case is for when the buyer doesn't contact you and doesn't pay within your set number of dates, so in your situation, opening the unpaid item case will just annoy the buyer further as you two already agreed to cancel the sale. It's not that the buyer didn't want to paid, it's because he *couldn't* (as he claimed).

In this case, you should only bother with the "report the buyer" action, which is what momcqueen was trying to show you. She wasn't trying to show you how to open the unpaid item case.

Here is another way to do it which should be easier:
1. Go to my.ebay.ca
2. Find your order, click "More Actions" which should show you a drop down list, and click "Report this buyer".
3. Then you see options such as Buyer made unreasonable demands, Buyer left inappropriate feedback, Buyer abused a buyer protection program, Buyer misused returns, Other problems

In your case, I'd choose "Buyer left inappropriate feedback" and then go from there. Since I have never reported a buyer I don't know what the next screen would say, but you should be able to see what to do from there.

Alternatively you can also go to this link and enter your item #. Again, I have never had to report a bad buyer so I don't know what actually happens when you enter your #.
https://spd.ebay.ca/spd/RBASellerHub