Fees, Duties, and now Tariffs, holy cow !!

T

tg_vegas

AzB Gold Member
Gold Member
I recently made a deal to buy a USED mezz cue and shaft from a guy in Toronto. We haggled a bit on price but ended up at a price, SHIPPED, that we could both live with

I paid him via PayPal, friends and family. All good so far.

Next day, Paypal hits me with a $31 transaction fee. No explanation since it was not a G&S transaction.

Then the cue got stuck in customs for a couple of days but eventually made it to me after a little more than a week later.

THEN, the bills came.. Duty fees, and Trump Tariffs, etc... another $46.50 in fees.

In the end, if I had known that I would have almost $100 in fees to buy this used cue from an AZB member in Canada, I would never have bought it.

Buyer beware
 
tg_vegas said:
I recently made a deal to buy a USED mezz cue and shaft from a guy in Toronto. We haggled a bit on price but ended up at a price, SHIPPED, that we could both live with

I paid him via PayPal, friends and family. All good so far.

Next day, Paypal hits me with a $31 transaction fee. No explanation since it was not a G&S transaction.

Then the cue got stuck in customs for a couple of days but eventually made it to me after a little more than a week later.

THEN, the bills came.. Duty fees, and Trump Tariffs, etc... another $46.50 in fees.

In the end, if I had known that I would have almost $100 in fees to buy this used cue from an AZB member in Canada, I would never have bought it.

Buyer beware
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Well, say thank to President Trump while ya can. It has nothing to do with the Canadian guy, it’s the tariff that USA imposed on Canada recently.
While the Canadian been paying for that fee on Canada government as the beginning of time.
How much was the cue valued on duty paper? Usually I put 50$ or 100$ to make sure there are some value on the item and ups won’t lose it.
 
Ģüśţāṿ said:
I was about to buy something from ebay and the seller was also in Canada. I couldn't believe how much the fees were that were added on in checkout, so I backed out.

Feels like we're going a bit backwards here 😕
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It’s better to go through the back door, you can use escrow services. I do it for many of my buddy then I drive to Niagara Falls to give the cues to my buddy in buffalo, New York. I usually sit and chat with him about cues and such. Just relax and give him the cue to ship it out from buffalo, New York.
 
KenneyTran said:
Well, say thank to President Trump while ya can. It has nothing to do with the Canadian guy, it’s the tariff that USA imposed on Canada recently.
While the Canadian been paying for that fee on Canada government as the beginning of time.
How much was the cue valued on duty paper? Usually I put 50$ or 100$ to make sure there are some value on the item and ups won’t lose it.
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What happens when you set/declare your value at $100 and they destroy a $4k cue? Brian.
 
a1712 said:
What happens when you set/declare your value at $100 and they destroy a $4k cue? Brian.
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Here’s the issues with buying and selling.
1st) The seller won’t pay for duty fee and such because it has nothing to do with them.
2nd) to be safe I asked my buyer about insurance or on my post, I would put it like this
“💲priced (includes shipping & fees)
📦 Insurance available at buyer’s expense
💳 Payment accepted via PayPal, F&F or G&S(4% on top)”

If the buyer want it to be insured at it worth then by all means pay for the fee and they will pay for duty for that as well.
3rd) in case of the cue get damaged or issues, usually if get damaged like crush or broken, the fee would go to seller. Why? First, the packaging need to be safe. I used cue into tube, then tube into a square or triangular box. Everything are stuffed with bubble wrap and tightly to ensure no movement inside. At the end, seller need to find every way to send the cue to buyer’s hand safely. I saw many seller even have it in PCV tube.

2nd) if the cue got confiscated like ivory or rare wood issues, that’s the buyer issues. If the buyer imports or buying something that they broke the law, then it doesn’t fall into seller problem. The buyer should have done his own research of whether or not that cue able to import into his hand safely. As seller, we sometimes know the law and rules but as such only generalize not specifically to every location.

Does that answer your question??
 
tg_vegas said:
I recently made a deal to buy a USED mezz cue and shaft from a guy in Toronto. We haggled a bit on price but ended up at a price, SHIPPED, that we could both live with

I paid him via PayPal, friends and family. All good so far.

Next day, Paypal hits me with a $31 transaction fee. No explanation since it was not a G&S transaction.

Then the cue got stuck in customs for a couple of days but eventually made it to me after a little more than a week later.

THEN, the bills came.. Duty fees, and Trump Tariffs, etc... another $46.50 in fees.

In the end, if I had known that I would have almost $100 in fees to buy this used cue from an AZB member in Canada, I would never have bought it.

Buyer beware
Click to expand...


Well you learn a lesson for $100.00, now you sharing info for FREE. Nice for you to share your story.
 
iusedtoberich said:
It's been like this since the beginning of time. Nothing to do with the current administration. The amounts may have varied over the years slightly. That's why international shipping is ALWAYS a pain in the ass, and most people avoid it at all costs.
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You normally post a lot of good stuff, but this is complete BS. The current situation has nothing to do with the current administration, WTF are you smoking?
 
Jimmorrison said:
You normally post a lot of good stuff, but this is complete BS. The current situation has nothing to do with the current administration, WTF are you smoking?
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I've shipped and purchased internationally about once every 3 months for a few years for my dayjob. All different countries. Was ALWAYS a pain in the ass. Duties. Fees. Declarations forms. Customs holding the package. This was in the 2010's. Yes, Trump raised some of the fees now, I won't argue that. But its always been a huge pain in the ass shipping internationally compared to domestically.
 
Discogs has been eviscerated by this stuff. Not a good situation for collectors who have gotten used to having reasonable access to the global market for collectible goods.
 
tg_vegas said:
I recently made a deal to buy a USED mezz cue and shaft from a guy in Toronto. We haggled a bit on price but ended up at a price, SHIPPED, that we could both live with

I paid him via PayPal, friends and family. All good so far.

Next day, Paypal hits me with a $31 transaction fee. No explanation since it was not a G&S transaction.

Then the cue got stuck in customs for a couple of days but eventually made it to me after a little more than a week later.

THEN, the bills came.. Duty fees, and Trump Tariffs, etc... another $46.50 in fees.

In the end, if I had known that I would have almost $100 in fees to buy this used cue from an AZB member in Canada, I would never have bought it.

Buyer beware
Click to expand...
Citizen beware...
 
I had another Canadian seller on here (not Kenny) literally tell.me this would never happen on a 2k cue shipping from Toronto..

It's only going to ramp more as the duties control technology that's getting ready to roll out ramps because the new software is using a Palantir develop LLM model to catalog senders, receivers, and value.

So there going to start tracking the same person sending lots of $100 items to US destinations which is going to make Kenny's current hack stop working. They will just do a deep inspection of the package, meaning they will seize it, a month later they will open it, four months after that they will research it and validate the actual value vs the declared value and if it's significantly above the declared there not going to fine you there just going to permanently seize the item and destroy it.

Your better off declaring a value of $900, paying the duty on that amount (20%) and getting your item. International sellers are going to have to factor this one of two ways, jack up the price of their cues 30% and not sell them, or eat the fees. Sadly I think this just means the end of cross border selling/buying...

And one last gift I will share, here is the customs code for Billiards items that you will need to put on the customs forms: 9504.20.00
 
tg_vegas said:
I recently made a deal to buy a USED mezz cue and shaft from a guy in Toronto. We haggled a bit on price but ended up at a price, SHIPPED, that we could both live with

I paid him via PayPal, friends and family. All good so far.

Next day, Paypal hits me with a $31 transaction fee. No explanation since it was not a G&S transaction.

Then the cue got stuck in customs for a couple of days but eventually made it to me after a little more than a week later.

THEN, the bills came.. Duty fees, and Trump Tariffs, etc... another $46.50 in fees.

In the end, if I had known that I would have almost $100 in fees to buy this used cue from an AZB member in Canada, I would never have bought it.

Buyer beware
Click to expand...
So… you unsuccessfully tried to commit fraud?
 
Benelli said:
I had another Canadian seller on here (not Kenny) literally tell.me this would never happen on a 2k cue shipping from Toronto..

It's only going to ramp more as the duties control technology that's getting ready to roll out ramps because the new software is using a Palantir develop LLM model to catalog senders, receivers, and value.

So there going to start tracking the same person sending lots of $100 items to US destinations which is going to make Kenny's current hack stop working. They will just do a deep inspection of the package, meaning they will seize it, a month later they will open it, four months after that they will research it and validate the actual value vs the declared value and if it's significantly above the declared there not going to fine you there just going to permanently seize the item and destroy it.

Your better off declaring a value of $900, paying the duty on that amount (20%) and getting your item. International sellers are going to have to factor this one of two ways, jack up the price of their cues 30% and not sell them, or eat the fees. Sadly I think this just means the end of cross border selling/buying...

And one last gift I will share, here is the customs code for Billiards items that you will need to put on the customs forms: 9504.20.00
Click to expand...
That is actually very true, when the trump tariff act started on oct-1st for Canadian people. My cue was stopped and it went through a serious 2.5 weeks of inspection. However, they are eased up abit since then. If you were to declare as 100$, the reason I used was return service. The value of the cue is whatever you say it is but my work on this cue is 100$ service. The shipping code is 9504.20.00 and that needs to be filled out for quicker scan and verification. If they scans it and feel like it has no issues, it will go by faster than not knowing what’s inside. Xray are very good now, if you declare it two shafts one butt and it shows up as that. They usually let it go. I shipped out 2-3 cues a week sometime 5-7, but that’s my experience. Knock on wood.
 
Welcome to the real world...
If I buy a $1000 cue from anywhere in the world, I would pay between $100 to $300 extra for shipping, fees and taxes...
a $100 is on the cheap side. Enjoy your new cue.
 
yes, if you’re in Europe or Australia.
Probably the same for Asia.

I can help if you’re in USA, i drive to new York weekly to pick up my cues and send out cues lol, and I didn’t charge any shipping fee as my cue sold with shipping included.
 
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