@fergua3 wrote:
somethng's not adding up with all these returns ebay and other sellers are getting. Are regular people who send stuff to the US eg to relatives, friends etc also getting a high percentage of returns? I haven't heard of a single incident.
When i first started adding COO and HS numbers to packages a few weeks ago, i had to get it done at the Post Office. The ladies that work there had no idea what i was talking about and it took them several minutes of coaching from me to figure out how to add them. Flash forward a few weeks to now and i was just there having them add a couple more COO HS numbers. I asked how many people are doing this.....they said nobody is.
This is a very busy Post Office, hundreds of packages per day. So if all those packages many that are US bound, are being sent without COO HS codes are they all getting rejected by US Customs? Again, i haven't heard of a single incident and neither have the ladies who work at the Post Office.
So why are seller's packages getting such a high rejection rate? Are they being targeted by US Customs?
For anyone sending a US-bound package at the post office (your typical non-business type people sending gifts, or small time business sellers not buying their postage online) there is no requirement to enter a "country of origin" on the post office computers. It's simply not a required field for the clerk to fill out when processing the transaction. The fields for CoO and HS code ARE there, as you've noted, but there is no requirement to fill them in and no directive from Canada Post to ask for that information either (which is why you encountered confusion from the clerks). Works the same way on SnapShip if you buy your labels online. Simply put: Canada Post does not believe this is an important piece of information to include on exports, so they don't require it to be filled in.
So, for all these packages they're just being sent with no CoO on the customs declaration. I would imagine they're all passing through customs and arriving just fine, simply because US CBP does not have the infrastructure/manpower to be opening every package and figuring out where the items are made. At least, I haven't noticed any RTS packages being sent back to the post office I work at, or customers coming in to complain. The ones that are clearly marked with "China" on the customs declaration are easy for CBP to identify and refuse.
I would almost recommend people sending things made in China via Canada Post to leave the country of origin field blank, as there's less likely to be an issue (one would think). But I can't recall if eBay labels (or other third-party label printing platforms) have that as a required field when filling out the information? And of course, they could also just start refusing anything without a CoO specified just as easily as they are refusing the China ones.
It's a huge clusterf***. I just stopped sending anything made in China to the States entirely until this is all figured out. I just wish my non-made in China items weren't getting caught in these border delays.
