"No Mail to Australia!" Topic

Just learned the US suspended 1st class and Priority mail to Australia as of Sept. 3

Also, the EU now needs me to have a physical office in side the EU to ship there, or to pay for a service that will do it for me.

Sigh, looks like no more shipping to the EU for Scale Creep Miniatures,,,

I too had to refund a couple fellow gamers in Australia who had ordered our Gettysburg Soldiers Rules, because my local post office could not/would not accept the package!

Do we know the reason for the suspension of mail to Australia? Does this suspension include New Zealand?

What the Heck?!?
Not that it affects me directly, but did the USPS offer an explanation for this?

According to USPS website it's because of COVID…..

3D print files and PDFs look better all the time,.

While it is of little consolation, I have largely stopped buying from the USA, because postage rates are now impossibly high. :(

Me too, sigh.

Crud. I have a purchase that I made from Australia.

COVID??? And shipping?!?!/

Last I read, it doesn't survive on packages long enough to make shipping to or from Australia a significant risk to anyone. By the time it made it across the ocean, the virus would be dead.

It's official. The world has gone nuts.

There's a shortage of shipping containers at the moment, air and sea. Containers are getting stuck in quarantine which is the actual cause of the shortage. There's a pause to allow catch up. Otherwise companies are having to outbid each other to get their hands on a container.

The EU, that's just forcing their citizens to buy local. It's not good.

It's getting weird down under. Reminds of the 1989 Jello Biafra track "Shut Up Be Happy".

Does not seem to affect mail to New Zealand as I just sent an order there.

A simple look at the USPS website provides the facts.

Listed under "Suspension Due to Unavailability of Transportation" are a list of countries, including Australia.

Further reading reveals the following details:

"Australia's service disruption affects Priority Mail International® (PMI), First-Class Package International Service® (FCPIS®), Commercial ePacket (CeP), International Priority Airmail® (IPA®) packets and International Surface Air Lift® (ISAL®) packets only."

While there are no pictures to look at, here is the link to all the above information and more:

link

Extra Crispy – it isn't about actually shipping goods to the EU but about changes to the way in which they collect the taxes due on imports. As usual, and like all other governments, it is aimed at larger businesses and the 'requirements' are impossible for small sellers to meet.

I'm fairly sure that there is a simple way round it but it means that the customer has to pay the tax, plus any handling fees, before they get it delivered. This does mean your products will be more expensive to buy but not that you can't send them.

There were supposed to be systems in place here in the UK that avoided the need for a local agent once we left the EU. Not unexpectedly our incompetent government haven't managed to get that running yet – or much else for that matter.

I (not so) recently contracted my preferred US forwarder to forward my miraculous 1c ebay finds, including a nice sweater, some nice jeans, a nice waterproof jacket or two, some hardware, some GURPS modules and a Bruce Springsteen CD box set. All in all, by using the service I paid my imprisoners minimum import duty by being able to declare the actual value myself, and my order took 2.5 months to arrive. Usually a week from the US. shipito have you covered. USA to AUS. You WILL get it, you CAN declare the actual value and you avoid the ridiculous import fees (much more than just GST) ebay now charges into AUS.

I just received an order from Triguard Miniatures in New Zealand in the mail without a problem.

Extra Crispy – just smuggle the stuff there on one of those shiny new subs the Aussies are buying…

@GildasFascit:

Yes, I can ship to a customer "taxes due" but they are then also hit with a handling fee.

The real rub is I either have to have an office in the EU or pay a service to be my EU representative. I'm a one man shop, there's no way I can afford that.

Luckily, I don't ship all that much to the EU (a lot of what I sell is imported from there). But even so, every lost market…

Not unexpectedly our incompetent government haven't managed to get that running yet – or much else for that matter.

That's a hoot….! Compared to the self-serving, unelected bureaucracy that runs the EU, our government is a paragon of efficiency….

DBDD

DBDD – you must be living in a different UK to me then.

USPS announced this about a month ago.

See if you can find photos of container ships waiting for
dock space to unload.

There seem to be quite a few at West Coast ports.
Perhaps that's why there is a container shortage.

Container shortage is worldwide mate. When that big bastard of a container ship got stuck in the Suez it kicked off a massive chain reaction. If only I owned a container manufacturing company right now.

>>Yes, I can ship to a customer "taxes due" but they are then also hit with a handling fee.

Yeah well what's new?
IF tax is applicable* >THEN PAY TAX >>PAY HANDLING FEE if appropriate;

still miles cheaper then an Agent doing it; and we've had this for my ENTIRE life time using the PostOffice. SO well done world, finally catching up.

The new PIRATES OF THE WORLD are the profiteering SHIPPING and FForward companies, and thier domestic cronies the CONTAINER companies. They pay pittance to third-world sailors and treat them worse than dogs.

*Taxes usually have a applied minimum below which goods flow freely; however punitive governmental cronyism doesn't always allow it.
~d

I don't see how overseas countries can impose their requirements for sellers'/shippers' from other countries, who are NOT bound by their laws, unless a treaty or other agreement has been worked out by the sellers'/shippers' home country.

Of course the UK, EU, Oz, or other governments may make any pronouncements they wish, but I suspect many if not all of them can be ignored.

eBay though, if you are selling through that, may accept their edicts, since they have a virtual presence world-wide.

I don't see how overseas countries can impose their laws on us. We fought a large war 240+ years ago and won, in order to prevent just that.

As far as I know, international taxes are almost always paid by the recipient, unless otherwise agreed to. That is the norm.

"I don't see how overseas countries can impose their laws on us. We fought a large war 240+ years ago and won, in order to prevent just that."

Ausgov can and will block your overseas based seller website if you refuse to collect our sales tax.

It's called authoritarian micro control. Basically the Chicoms are the model and Ausgov wishes to become it.

I imagine there may be ways around that.

Sadly, Western governments seem to be learning and implementing a lot of bad things from the Chi-Coms of late.

Makes me wonder if ALL have not secretly agreed to, or are working toward that One World Order we've been warned about, and we are just in the preliminary testing stages of the implementation.

I guess on the plus side, the Chinese government's taxation rate is actually lower than the one being proposed here in the USA, so American business leaders may be on board with that.

I don't see how overseas countries can impose their laws on us. We fought a large war 240+ years ago and won, in order to prevent just that.

Well, they aren't collecting those taxes and fees in Pennsylvania. They're collecting them in Corleone, Bad Schwartzheim and St Sulpice. It's just like paying tariffs over here in the good old USA. It's our government that imposes them on us. Not the EU. It's always the customer who ends up paying. EC can charge his prices, charge for shipping, and then the EU charges the recipient ransom.

Maybe they need smugglers like John Hancock. But that's not my place.

Thresher -　absolutely. There are World Gov afficianados in my govt and yours. They admire China for "getting things done" even if they wipe their asses with human rights decrees. It's a disgusting situation.

So, getting back to reality, it's about things caused by COVID and not-caused by COVID hitting at the same time, but not directly about COVID. Ripple effect.

Tariffs are a dumb way to collect revenue, but a great way to force better trade negotiations in the short term. But they only work for the latter IF other sources exist for the products being taxed which are therefore not taxed because they don't come from the tariffed source.

So maybe this shipping block might be good in the long run for the Americas and Europe, if it causes manufacturing to return to domestic sites rather than overseas sources. It might also bring an end to slave-labor practices in China— if you can't sell the crap, there's no point in forcing people to make the crap.

Well, I use a painter in Australia, so that is not good news for me. I always use priority flat rate so I, which seems to go by plain, so why would a container shortage effect parcels that that come by plane?

I have looked into using a courier, and while being more expensive (almost double), the transit times seem very quick compared to the postal services so I may suck it up.

Are parcels still coming from Australia to the US via the postal services?

link

Article in the news today warning it's too late to order Christmas presents from overseas.

Parzival – you don't think I live in reality? Do you live in East Coast Australia right now? Reality is really en interesting right now here, probably nothing you ever experienced whereever you are.

I don't see how overseas countries can impose their laws on us.

They don't.

Every country controls what crosses their borders (here's hoping that doesn't incite a bucket of stupid). If you don't want to collect tax their way, then you choose not to bring your stuff to our their country.

As far as I know, international taxes are almost always paid by the recipient, unless otherwise agreed to. That is the norm

It is. A norm. Not a legal basis. It's easier to enforce laws on people in your jurisdiction that want to stay there. Collecting in your own country is easier and cheaper. And it doesn't limit incoming products. That said, it's a choice; not a law.