"Shipping to Mexico " Topic

I just moved to Merida, Yucatan Mexico. Been down here a few months and settled in now. I'm planning to do some Winter War 1939/40 gaming and need to order a few kits and some boxes of plastic figs. I found an Ebay store that has everything I need. The guy is in Taiwan, he gave me a quoted on the shipping (about $25 for roughly 10 kits -- don't need the boxes.) He said he'd put a low value on the customs form.

My question is, any Mexicans out there who have experience getting stuff shipped from Taiwan? What are the chances I'll get my stuff. Should I expect to pay extra customs/duty on this when it hits Mexico? Anything else you think I should know before I drop $150 USD on my order and pray…

CH

I live in Mexico City and I have ordered some items even from mainland China and had no problems, yet toys (and plastic model kits) have a lot of import taxes. (About a 150%)
My advice is: Use regular mail, never use UPS or some other international carrier, that is because carriers will always charge you taxes and via regular mail most of the times you will not be taxed.
Mexican postal custom service is quite "random" as some packages get opened and taxed other go through with zero problems and zero taxes.
It all depends on pure luck, customs personel use a "semaforo fiscal" which is a true random device which lights up red or green as every package is tested before it can go out from the postal office to be delivered; if the "semaforo" light is red the package will be opened and taxed, if the light is green, then it will reach itīs destination unopened and with no taxes added.
Even if the package gets opened and the items have no boxes and unless the sprues themselves state "Made in China" the local SAT authority will have no idea on how much to tax them and will probablly just stamp it as "exento" (no tax); but again, it is all a mater of luck.
I would recommend to "test the waters" about how the Merida postal custom service works (because all SAT postal officers work a little different) with a small order, before going into spending a lot of money only to have all the goods highly taxed.
Hope this helps.
Aegnatius

Aegnatius,

Thanks very much for your thorough answer -- although its not really what I was hoping to hear! Starting out with a small order pretty much defeats the purpose because I'll end up paying more on shipping if I have to order a second time. And then, it sounds like theres a lot of inconsistency so there's no guarantee the 2nd time will work the same way as the first.

Can you tell me, is there only tax on items made in China, because I don't think any of the kits I'm ordering are made there?

Any other suggestions you can think of?
Thanks again for your help.

CH

Ugh……. Shipping to Mexico is a real headache.

The high taxes are just a problem on products made in continental China specially toys(plastic soldiers and models are, for mexican postal law, toys) and textiles; both of this products, if made in China, pay a lot of taxes, toys are taxes at a 50% (sorry, I was wrong in my last post) and textiles a 156%.
Items made in other countries, even toys, if they get taxed at all, only pay a 16%.
I would say if none of the thing you order are made in China you will have no problems.
But be carefull and as postal officials pay extra atention to packages from Asia containing toys, as they usually suspect they may be chinese.
Hope this helps.
Aegnatius