Easiest scenarios for sending parcels between countries
November 21, 2018 10:31 AM Subscribe
Given the following countries, is it easier for individuals to send parcels between any particular combination of them? The countries are UK, US, Australia, and Canada. An example of the kind of info I'm looking for is something like "It's much easier to ship between __ and __ because they are both in the Commonwealth" or "It's easier to ship from the __ to anywhere else because (reason I'm not aware of)" or "Don't make people ship between __ and __ because it will basically never happen". Thank you!
When I say "Easier" I'm interested in both cost & likelihood of the package arriving within a reasonable time frame.
US:
UK to US is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
US to UK is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Australia to US is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
US to Australia is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Canada to US is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
US to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Canada:
UK to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Canada to UK is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Australia to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Canada to Australia is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
UK
Australia to UK is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
UK to Australia is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Australia
Canada to Australia is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Australia to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
When I say "Easier" I'm interested in both cost & likelihood of the package arriving within a reasonable time frame.
US:
UK to US is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
US to UK is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Australia to US is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
US to Australia is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Canada to US is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
US to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Canada:
UK to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Canada to UK is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Australia to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Canada to Australia is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
UK
Australia to UK is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
UK to Australia is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Australia
Canada to Australia is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
Australia to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
When sending to the UK, bear in mind that anything you send with a commercial value over GBP 15.00 will incur customs charges, and that if customs charges are due the postage cost counts towards the chargeable value.
So if you send someone a gift with a commercial value of £15.37 they may have to pay £16 in customs charges.
For context, I have recently paid a customs charge to release an item I paid USD 42.00 for (about GBP 32.75). Shipping was USD 54.95.
The customs charge was GBP 26.96, or 82% of the item price. £12 of that went on "handling fees" and the rest went on VAT. VAT in this country is 20%, and £14.96 converts to roughly 20% of $96.95.
As far as I know, this would hold for packages coming from any of the countries you name.
posted by tel3path at 11:10 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
So if you send someone a gift with a commercial value of £15.37 they may have to pay £16 in customs charges.
For context, I have recently paid a customs charge to release an item I paid USD 42.00 for (about GBP 32.75). Shipping was USD 54.95.
The customs charge was GBP 26.96, or 82% of the item price. £12 of that went on "handling fees" and the rest went on VAT. VAT in this country is 20%, and £14.96 converts to roughly 20% of $96.95.
As far as I know, this would hold for packages coming from any of the countries you name.
posted by tel3path at 11:10 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Great info so far and yes this is for gifts under $20 (US) and we can round that down as needed.
posted by bleep at 11:13 AM on November 21, 2018
posted by bleep at 11:13 AM on November 21, 2018
If this is for this year, you should be aware that Canada Post employees are currently conducting rotating strikes and our parcel delivery services are kind of a nightmare as a result.
As long as packages are low value so they won't be subject to taxes / duty crossing the border, shipping to Canada by courier is fine, but if they go much above $20, the recipient will get dinged a massive fee for the courier to stop the shipment and charge them the taxes and/or duties -- I've been charged a $17 fee in order to be assessed $5 in taxes, so it's a truly stupid amount. This is set to rise to $40 with the onset of the USMCA, but that is not in effect yet.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:19 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
As long as packages are low value so they won't be subject to taxes / duty crossing the border, shipping to Canada by courier is fine, but if they go much above $20, the recipient will get dinged a massive fee for the courier to stop the shipment and charge them the taxes and/or duties -- I've been charged a $17 fee in order to be assessed $5 in taxes, so it's a truly stupid amount. This is set to rise to $40 with the onset of the USMCA, but that is not in effect yet.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:19 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Okay, USD 20.00 works out to GBP 15.64 - today - so if you sent out a gift worth $19.99 your recipient would have to dig into their pocket.
$18.50 converts to £14.47 so I would suggest a ceiling of $18.50 for gifts you send to the UK.
posted by tel3path at 11:20 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
$18.50 converts to £14.47 so I would suggest a ceiling of $18.50 for gifts you send to the UK.
posted by tel3path at 11:20 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: OK on further consideration, thanks to this good info, is it easier to ship to and from Australia from any particular other country on the list, or is it all kind of the same?
posted by bleep at 11:24 AM on November 21, 2018
posted by bleep at 11:24 AM on November 21, 2018
US to Canada is (an OK combination) (a bad combination)
US to Canada, when talking about book sized items, can be cheaper than some Canada to Canada shipments of the same item! When I was doing this often a few years ago, the cost was usually under $5 per book.
posted by soelo at 11:51 AM on November 21, 2018
US to Canada, when talking about book sized items, can be cheaper than some Canada to Canada shipments of the same item! When I was doing this often a few years ago, the cost was usually under $5 per book.
posted by soelo at 11:51 AM on November 21, 2018
Sending to the UK, the threshold for charging VAT (fixed 20% of value on nearly all goods) on gifts is £39, and for paying customs duties (extremely country and product dependent if they're fully applied, which they aren't until much higher values of gifts) starts at £135. Official source.
For genuine gifts, you'll be duty exempt in all those countries at $20, I strongly suspect.
posted by ambrosen at 12:00 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
For genuine gifts, you'll be duty exempt in all those countries at $20, I strongly suspect.
posted by ambrosen at 12:00 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
Shipping from Canada (even Canada, as soelo notes) to anywhere is expensive. A further detail to our Canada Post labour problems is that Canada's asked many countries to stop shipping parcels to Canada until it's resolved. So very little is coming in, and it doesn't look as if it will be resolved before the new year.
posted by scruss at 12:12 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by scruss at 12:12 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
ambrosen: For genuine gifts, the UK still charges.
posted by tel3path at 12:36 PM on November 21, 2018
posted by tel3path at 12:36 PM on November 21, 2018
To and from Australia is the hardest and most expensive of any of those, I believe. (I have shopped between Australia and each of the others, and between the USA and Canada, but not between UK and USA or Canada.)
From Australia to anywhere is very expensive to ship things. And to Australia has the biosecurity issues mentioned above. Food will be inspected. Anything with any honey in it, or fresh plant or animal matter will be confiscated. Wood, leather or straw or anything like that may or may not be allowed in depending on what it looks like.
posted by lollusc at 2:03 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
From Australia to anywhere is very expensive to ship things. And to Australia has the biosecurity issues mentioned above. Food will be inspected. Anything with any honey in it, or fresh plant or animal matter will be confiscated. Wood, leather or straw or anything like that may or may not be allowed in depending on what it looks like.
posted by lollusc at 2:03 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
It depends a bit on what you call parcels. In my experience:
posted by Pinback at 4:57 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
- USA to Aus - OK combination for small parcels if using USPS - < a few 100 grams / a few 10's of oz is cheap (~US$10) and fairly quick (7-12 days). Anything much bigger than that, & it starts making sense to use a courier/shipper. I'd give specific examples, but the USPS site doesn't easily give all the options, and all the small boxes I have lying around have their labels missing. I do know that a 130x90x80mm box of radio valves costs ~US$10 to ship by, I think, International First Class.
- Aus to USA - OK combination for small parcels if using AusPost - <500g is AU$17/US$12, and again 7~12 days. But go over that and the cost more than doubles e.g. 501g-1kg = $30+, etc, so you start investigating courier/shipping companies.
- UK to Aus - limited experience, but OK. Forget Royal Mail's International Standard - it's cheap, & they say "up to 12 weeks", but IME it's more like 4-6 months or more. International Standard is OK at ~UK£9/AU$16 <500g & 10-20 days, and IIRC up to 2kg is not too bad.
- Aus to UK - again, limited experience, but starting to get expensive. <500g is ~AU$21 & 8~20 days, but again more than doubles to $AU35 for 500g-1kg.
- EU to Aus - variable depending on country. Most individuals & small sellers I've dealt with do weekly runs to a nearby country with cheap postage & send from there…
- Aus to EU - in general, it's about the same as Aus to UK in price & time e.g. AU to DE, FR, CH, or ES is ~AU$22 for <500g, though there are exceptions (e.g BE is ~AU$28, & seems to take an inordinate amount of time).
posted by Pinback at 4:57 PM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]
See, I find this information interesting because in my experience small parcel shipping from the US to Aus takes around a month, whereas from the UK to Aus takes 7-12 days - the exact opposite of your experience!
posted by Jubey at 6:03 PM on November 21, 2018
posted by Jubey at 6:03 PM on November 21, 2018
Maybe I'm lucky 😉
I won't say there aren't item/occasions where the US has taken longer (I think the worst has been ~1 month) or the UK has been quicker (I know I've seen 5 days from UK to my door a couple of times!) - but for me, averaging 4~5 parcels a month from the US or UK, about 1 every month or so to the US or UK, and the odd thing every month or two to/from Europe, that's been my experience.
From the US, at least, it also depends on where it's coming from - stuff from the west coast is usually direct to Sydney (very occasionally it'll come straight to me in Brisbane, though I haven't seen that in a while), and stuff from the lower east coast usually goes either via D-FW or direct to the west coast then here, but stuff from the north-east or central US often goes Kansas City ->Honolulu -> (occasionally a long wait) -> Sydney. Sometimes that last hop goes via Japan.
I've long had a sneaking suspicion that it depends on the time of the week - most of the time I'm ordering or sending on a Wednesday or Thursday, so maybe I'm just hitting the sweet spot where cargo space is available - and it definitely depends on the time of year.
(I also just assume that cut-price logistics is a dark art. I've had the odd thing that's been shipped from China/HK to Malmö or Žilina-Strečno, put into the mail system & postmarked there, then arrive in Brisbane 6~12 weeks later…)
posted by Pinback at 7:01 PM on November 21, 2018
I won't say there aren't item/occasions where the US has taken longer (I think the worst has been ~1 month) or the UK has been quicker (I know I've seen 5 days from UK to my door a couple of times!) - but for me, averaging 4~5 parcels a month from the US or UK, about 1 every month or so to the US or UK, and the odd thing every month or two to/from Europe, that's been my experience.
From the US, at least, it also depends on where it's coming from - stuff from the west coast is usually direct to Sydney (very occasionally it'll come straight to me in Brisbane, though I haven't seen that in a while), and stuff from the lower east coast usually goes either via D-FW or direct to the west coast then here, but stuff from the north-east or central US often goes Kansas City ->Honolulu -> (occasionally a long wait) -> Sydney. Sometimes that last hop goes via Japan.
I've long had a sneaking suspicion that it depends on the time of the week - most of the time I'm ordering or sending on a Wednesday or Thursday, so maybe I'm just hitting the sweet spot where cargo space is available - and it definitely depends on the time of year.
(I also just assume that cut-price logistics is a dark art. I've had the odd thing that's been shipped from China/HK to Malmö or Žilina-Strečno, put into the mail system & postmarked there, then arrive in Brisbane 6~12 weeks later…)
posted by Pinback at 7:01 PM on November 21, 2018
This thread is closed to new comments.
The only think of note that I've noticed is that parcels FROM the USA seem to take longer to get where they're going than things shipped TO me from those same addresses in other countries. countries. In over 20 years of regularly shipping stuff between those countries, first for business & now personally I've never had a parcel go missing, I've had them take 6 months to arrive when shipping from the USA to Australia.
Shipping to Australia you do have to be very careful of what you ship, they have very strict customs, more from a disease & ecological damage POV than a tax you a lot POV & they will open parcels with things they think are suspicious in. The only times I've had parcels opened by customs was shipping into Australia from both the UK & the USA. Which was fine as I wasn't shipping anything illegal, but they don't repack very well and things got crumpled.
posted by wwax at 11:09 AM on November 21, 2018 [1 favorite]