What the Customs limits are for France? Relative to the eBay thread here, I have a customer who has purchased a bunch of cards and wants me to ship them to France as a gift. I am not interested in lying on my Customs forms. So I'll break the shipment up, if I can figure out what the limit is before she has to pay additional fees. I know from when we lived in Canada, anything over $20 got dinged.

Does anyone know what the amount is in France?

Thanks,

Laura

The Fed Ex website says that anything valued at less than 22 Euros may be duty free. Currently a Euro is worth about $1.36 US.

Rick

I think I've sold nearly 10,000 things on eBay. While all my customers are important - I've learned the more you mess with something - the more complicated it becomes and the greater the danger of disaster. Couple dollars to the person's own taxman doesn't seem like too big a deal - why get involved with even relatively harmless fraud? Every year I have but a couple of foreign transactions that come across my desk. Half of them request some sorta special valuation or shipping service and whatever. 11/12 years ago when feebay and myself were younger - I used to do ANYTHING the customer asked for. These are different times. With Playpal's autocratic rulings - the whole thing might become an issue if the item is actually lost, and besides 2 packages - twice as many chances to get lost. The only good thing is that usually they're too far away to kick your bass if sumptin happened.

My real concern at this point is, if I put the correct value on the customs forms (against her wishes) she has seven items and can neg me on each and every one of them.

I checked with Trust and Safety, and they said that since I don't have any language in my listings about buyers being responsible for fees etc., any negs she gives me, I get to keep.

I find that really obnoxious.

I am in the process now of bulk adding such language to all 600+ listings I have active now, to avoid such problems in the future.

But it irks me.

laura, i had a very bad transaction doing exactly that. for an over seas customer, the item didnt get there and the ins. was for pennies of the actual cost, because of the duty free thing, i do not ship outside the u.s. because of this, no exceptions. don't take the chance!!

Don't be affraid to ship outside of US, there is a world out there you know, but be clear about the customs, no gift rapping, no forge bill period.

I'd rather pay the custom fees then an outrageous shipping charge.

I'm Canadian by the way.

Hi Claude, nice to see a Johnny Canuck on here (my husband is Canadian, btw, from Halifax originally, and we lived in Saskatoon for six years before returning to the US.)

I am fine with shipping internationally, have done so for ten years. Just never had a customer ask me to fake it before. Mind you, the things I sell generally aren't more than $22E anyway, at least not individually (vintage postcards and other ephemera), but she bought seven at one time, which took it up to about $140 US.

I am almost through editing all the listings now. B o r i n g.