11 ms·

US Customs Export Control Says: I’m Screwed

186 points by exar0815 5y ago

henvic 5y ago
I'm sorry for your trouble. Customs are one of the most harmful things for society in our day and age. People in highly developed countries don't notice this much. Still, people from poorer countries with high bureaucracy and intervention in trade by customs cannot access good and cheaper stuff from elsewhere. In the end, a few official importers/exporters with good relations with the state apparatus plus corrupt customs agents benefit at the cost of the impoverished society.
- Amezarak 5y ago
  Conversely, cheap international goods can wipe out local industry, which can leave people in less developed economies permanently impoverished.
  - henvic 5y ago
    This is a lie. If you live in a rich country you consume thousands of different things a day. If you live in a poor country and are really poor, you might consume hundreds. You consume way more than you produce. Don't fall for this trap. Otherwise, next thing you'll stop doing business with anyone else because it's better to live by your own means.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      The....what? If you make a product X and someone imports product X from a country where labour is 1/10th of the price, you go bust. In a lot of cases countries impose customs duties to protect those businesses, because it's better to have a working industry than cheap goods. Which part exactly is a lie?
      - henvic 5y ago
        Tariffs aren't imposed to protect the population, but specific well-connected players who lobby for such protections to avoid competition.
        gambiting 5y ago
        Well, such a wild accusation requires a source. I can name several examples where tariffs were introduced specifically to protect local industries, mostly farmers, because it would be cheaper to just import foreign apples or carrots than locally grown, but obviously if you allow that to happen you don't have an apple or carrot growing industry next year. You could argue that "rich farm owners lobbied politicians to avoid competition" but you couldn't be any further from the truth. It was demanded by the farmer cooperatives and unions through protests, not some wealthy magnates.
        sokoloff 5y ago
        Is it more important to serve the farmers or the broad population who wants to eat apples and carrots?
        mind-blight 5y ago
        It really depends on the context. Focusing only on the price a costumer pays as your main metric ignores a lot of potentially negative externalities. One recent example in the US: a lot of small local business were suffering because the Chinese government was heavily subsidizing shipments to the US. So much so that it was cheaper in some places to get a product mailed from China than from across the street. The US started pushing back with tariffs while appealing too the universal postal union postal union. That kept the US businesses from going under while the UPU slowly went through the process of forcing china to follow their rules. And that's ignoring pollution, all the negatives that happen for the whole population when an industry and/or small businesses collapse within a country, and other negative externalities
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
    - whatever1 5y ago
      Protectionism seems to be working great for China though
      - astrange 5y ago
        It's not really working that well except that some of it serves their other ends, like being able to enforce laws on local companies better. What's much more important is they have good industrial policy, export discipline, and that unreasonably good deal with the UPU that lets them send mail to the US for cheaper than we can send it inside the country.
        whatever1 5y ago
        By not allowing amazon, google etc to do business in their country they enabled the development of huge, profitable corporations like Alibaba, Tencent etc that now employ advanced personnel like software developers, ML engineers etc, invest in university research, and overall have great positive impact in their economy. That is in direct contrast to what economists have been suggesting to us (aka the decision of China to restrict multinational corps to deploy their high tech would limit their growth)
        throwaway2048 5y ago
        Yep the idea that protectionism doesn't work and is harmful is in direct contravention to how every single advanced industrial economy developed. Its a self serving idea pushed by people who benefit massively.
        astrange 5y ago
        They have Baidu because they have the industrial policy, higher education system and subsidies to produce Baidu. If another country banned Google they would simply not have Google and that would be it. Note that Yandex and VK exist in Russia without having to ban all competition.
        whatever1 5y ago
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      In aggregate, we produce and consume an equal amount.
  - astrange 5y ago
    Being able to buy stuff cheaper is actually good because both supply and demand exist. A better way to grow an economy is to do "export discipline", the opposite of import restriction, where you force your local industries to be international quality so that other countries buy from you.
    - Amezarak 5y ago
      That might be great if the good we're talking about is consumer electronics. (At least economically. Environmentally or socially perhaps we'd be better off without consumer electronics.) It's difficult for me to see how this works for the farmers and textile manufacturers. Underdeveloped economies by definition don't have much advanced industry. If you wipe out local producers of necessities you have virtually nothing left and no base to build on to develop advanced industry. I'm also not really sure this has turned out well for advanced countries like the US, but it definitely does make part of the country richer. I'm leery of any argument that claims that any given economic policy is an unmitigated good with no contingencies or tradeoffs.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        If foreign food or textiles are cheaper than your local production in a developing nation, it seems your population is suffering from those inflated prices and the aggregate good of the nation may very well be improved by having more food and clothing available at lower-than-current prices. Anything less is forcing your local population to subsidize the inefficient-but-domestic production of goods.
        blululu 5y ago
        There’s an old joke about a statistician who drowned in water that was only one meter deep - On Average. Thinking in terms of aggregate value neglects the possibility that you will create winners and losers in such a scenario and creating a system of transfers to share the aggregate surplus is politically difficult.
        5y ago
  - clairity 5y ago
    in a similar vein, i could drown in a bathtub, but it's not likely. more rationale is needed here around whether that risk is worth considering seriously. the econ 101 idea that tariffs are always bad (something that invariably comes up in these kinds of discussions) is only true in perfectly spherical, frictionless worlds populated by instantaneously rational actors. tariffs actually can work in the real world (to develop a fledgling industry, for example), but it can't be a one-off holy-grail policy, but rather part of a holistic, coordinated program.
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  Seems like main issue you have is with corruption, not customs. Corruption is bad regardless. I'm happy our customs is making it harder for people to import all kinds of illegal and/or dangerous goods, like weapons and assorted chemicals pretending to be medicine or drugs, into our country.
  - antihero 5y ago
    The only thing I really care about for customs is bombs and human trafficking. I wish they would focus on those things and not just getting in the way of things. Maddening that my tax money is spent on preventing me doing stuff.
    - sterlind 5y ago
      you should also be concerned about pests riding along with your fruit, ready to destroy your country's ecosystem. there's boring yet legitimate stuff to scan for.
dominik-2020 5y ago
Maybe ask a customs broker?
- gambiting 5y ago
  This is the correct answer if you run a business. Customs brokers accept responsibility for making sure the packages go through the process successfully and usually have access to customer support channels normal mortals don't have.
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    While I agree, this shouldn't be the case though. The lack of transparency and accountability from a government agency is absurd but then again, these values don't seem to matter anymore. This person should be able to get an explanation as to why their shipments were declined by customs. It's absurd that they have seemingly unquestionable authority from the general public. I supposed you could take them to court and figure it out, but in most cases, I doubt that's a viable route.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      Absolutely 1000% agreed. But this parson specifically made a blog post basically saying "I run a business, I'm screwed, please help". Well, the immediate step would be to pay a broker to make sure those packages leave the US successfully and be doesn't lose customers. Then he can contact his representatives and complain second.
      - Scoundreller 5y ago
        Seems like the same issue would affect any rando cleaning out their basement with eBay too. As a Canadian, I can see why so few Americans want to ship internationally. Which is a negative economically.
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Yes, you have to pay them of course if you use their services, but it's also possible you can call one up and get a nice person who will take a minute or two & freely tell you if there's a current issue they're aware of.
fortran77 5y ago
What's amazing is there's no recourse.
- marcinzm 5y ago
  That's pretty much par for course with the USPS. One of the selling points of UPS/FedEx is that they have actual proper customer service (at least for large accounts).
  - Natsu 5y ago
    That makes me wonder if shipping it via UPS or similar would get them more information?
  - 4oh9do 5y ago
    One time a USPS delivery person stole my package. I know this because the tracking information a USPS clerk looked up for me showed the delivery person marking the package as delivered while being nowhere near the delivery address. In fact, nowhere near an address at all. It was marked as delivered to a street-intersection which houses a vacant field. The USPS clerk acknowledged this, but said that because there were no other complaints about the delivery person that day, there was nothing they could do. So it seems like USPS delivery people are literally allowed to steal one item of mail a day.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      Maybe he drove off, remembered he had to register your package, and then stopped to register it as delivered. Later a thief took it from your mailbox?
    - dataflow 5y ago
      I've seen USPS packages get marked as "delivered" quite a while after they've been physically delivered. Like half an hour later, if not more. Unless it was physically impossible to get to the marked location within that amount of time, I don't think you can assume the timing to mean anything as to its actual delivery.
spdustin 5y ago
What’s being shipped? You may not think it’s relevant, but if the author omits it from their post, they certainly do.
- rssoconnor 5y ago
  The image claims the contents are * plastic carrying case * computer memory module
- marcinzm 5y ago
  It's a blog on a site which sells things and the audience is presumably people who buy things on the site rather than hackernews: https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/ https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/
- occamrazor 5y ago
  The photo shows a shipment containing a “computer memory module”.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- gipp 5y ago
  There's a whole column in the table for it, or you could just check the shop page. It's electronics components for retro computing, basically.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- newacct583 5y ago
  The site sells a bunch of retrocomputing emulator products. It's not at all unlikely that some of this looks like hacking or R/E devices and fell afoul of someone's filter (or maybe they sell a keylogger or something unsavory that I just didn't see). The author, as others are pointing out, should hire a customs broker. This is a licensed professional who knows the process (and often the specific employees at the customs office) and can get answers to questions that can't be answered in stickers on packages. Or, if there's really a law enforcement angle here, they should call a lawyer. But HN isn't going to provide much help.
4oh9do 5y ago
At least they receive their packages back. Compare that to the eBay Global Shipping Program - where if eBay decides that your package violates some opaque rule, neither the sender nor the recipient receives the package. eBay keeps it.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Surely.........they reimburse both sides for it? Otherwise that's just theft or at the absolute minimum fraud. Ebay is absolutely free to reject any packages for any reason whatsoever, but they should always return them.
  - 4oh9do 5y ago
    Even with reimbursement, it is still theft. It's like if I buy a bike from you, and the delivery truck driver decides to keep the bike for themselves and instead gives me cash and drives off, with me having no say in this.
    - gambiting 5y ago
      Well.........kinda, but he's not stealing from you, he's stealing from the delivery company at that point. The delivery company accepts responsibility for the parcel when they collect it, and the contract usually says that either they will deliver the parcel or pay you back X where X is agreed beforehand. So if either of those two things happen they successfully complete their part of the contract. If the driver takes your parcel then it's up to the delivery company to prosecute, not you.
      - jMyles 5y ago
        Certainly he's stealing opportunity from you. Maybe you really needed the bike on the agreed-upon date.
        gambiting 5y ago
        If you need compensation for loss of opportunity and loss of profit and such, then there are companies which will happily accept liability for such for a sufficient financial incentive. Regular consumer-grade postage services very specifically exclude liability for anything outside of the delivery itself.
jupp0r 5y ago
Try to ship the returned packages with Fedex or UPS.
- ziml77 5y ago
  How would that help? FedEx and UPS don't have some special privilege to bypass customs.
  - oaiey 5y ago
    But maybe a different customs location/officer.
  - magicalhippo 5y ago
    However at least here in Norway, they do know who to reach at customs to get an answer as to why it was rejected. It might take a few bounces but typically they get an answer and is able to sort it out.
  - ryanlol 5y ago
    They do get special customs handling and can definitely assist you with these issues instead of just sending things back.
  - CodeWriter23 5y ago
    There is something to be said for packaging products such that they are not selected for screening. Won’t help this guy now, his stuff is flagged. But once we started shipping our international orders in a bubble envelope instead of a small box, we had many fewer returns as a result of unpaid import duty by the recipient.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Customs has a complicated relationship with postal vs. courier imports. Customs hates postal imports/exports because they have to deal with low values, low-reimbursement and end-users that may not be, ahem, diplomatic when either side makes an error/fails to comprehend an incomprehensible set of regulations. And the usual treatment of individual end-users with ambiguous resentment like this case. If everyone switched all imports/exports to Fedex/UPS/etc and customs only had to deal with brokers, they'd both be much much happier. Customs can just sit in an office receiving digitized info from the couriers and decide what they want to inspect/review instead of sifting by hand. Mostly, customs just ignores the postal stream and lets things slide through without 100% correct paperwork, but I'm sure Fedex/UPS regularly lobbies against this laissez-faire approach.
otterley 5y ago
Try reaching out to your local Congressperson’s office. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Edit: also, your local Postmaster.
- CodeWriter23 5y ago
  Customs != USPS
  - otterley 5y ago
    That's where the "congressperson" part comes in.
arbuge 5y ago
As one of the comments on the original article points out: "I notice your ‘Signature’ is a printed string." First thing that jumped out at me too when I read that label. I wonder if that's the reason. As far as I know, an actual signature is required there.
- marcinzm 5y ago
  If it's a pre-printed computer generated label then all you need is the printed name.
  - cbmuser 5y ago
    I don’t know about the US, but that’s definitely not allowed in Germany. It _must_ be signed by hand and I‘m pretty confident that the packages were rejected because of that. If they aren’t rejected by USPS, they _will_ be rejected by German customs.
    - marcinzm 5y ago
      >If they aren’t rejected by USPS, they _will_ be rejected by German customs. No they won't be, I've sent many packages to Germany using these types of "signatures" with zero issues. This in fact how every pre-printed USPS international label looks like (ie: Etsy, Pirate Ship, etc, etc.). Please don't make absolute statements about things you don't have first hand experience with.
      - arbuge 5y ago
        That's interesting. PayPal's built-in mailing software, which is what we use for international shipments, will not print signatures for you in this space - you have to sign international labels by hand. Seems like an oversight on their part if you're correct.
purpleidea 5y ago
Maybe they have a crappy algorithm that sees "EMU" and thinks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu and says "nope, we're not touching animals, you need a special form"? Either way, the lack of transparency is a huge problem. I thought the United States had all those guns to prevent the State from messing with them? Not sure that seems to have helped here. Good luck figuring this out! Go to the news media.
Const-me 5y ago
The envelope says “plastic carrying case and computer memory module”. Photo of the content there: https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/product/floppy-emu-model-c-bundle/ https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/product/floppy-emu-model-... I understand how technically that’s true. Still, I can see how for a non-technical person a PCB with OLED display and buttons does not look like a memory module. 99.99% of memory modules sold are DIMM or M2 SSD modules. They look very differently from the content of the package. I would try printing slightly more descriptive labels on these packages. Maybe “Custom aftermarket replacement part for 1979-1983 Macintosh computers”
- maxerickson 5y ago
  Based on the price, it is https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/product/mac-rom-inator-ii-atom-simm/ https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/product/mac-rom-inator-ii...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
snthd 5y ago
FOIA request?
jonpurdy 5y ago
As an aside, I’ve got a ADB Wombat from BMoW and it’s just awesome. Allows me to easily use my 1993 Apple Adjustable Keyboard with my modern Mac. Edit: forgot to mention that it also works great for using a USB mouse or keyboard on older Macs.
gambitown 5y ago
Your package is missing Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) [0], duh. Add a proper ECCN number (such as "EAR99" [1]), according the rules and regulations that apply to the specific product you're shipping. FYI, export violations can reach up to $1 million per violation, prison for up to 20 years, and administrative penalties. [0] https://www.shippingsolutions.com/blog/six-basic-steps-for-export-compliance https://www.shippingsolutions.com/blog/six-basic-steps-for-e... [1] EAR99 is not a free pass: https://www.shippingsolutions.com/blog/ear99-isnt-a-free-pass-for-export-compliance https://www.shippingsolutions.com/blog/ear99-isnt-a-free-pas...
- hervature 5y ago
  This is what the author puts in the comments on their site: Regarding the ECCN information: it’s my understanding that by writing NOEEI 30.37(a) on the label in the box for AES/ITN/Exemption, I’m stating that the items don’t require an export license or permit and are valued under $2500, so no commercial invoice or ECCN numbers should be required. In other words, I think what I have included on the form should be OK as-is.
  - gambitown 5y ago
    > so no ECCN numbers should be required. That's wrong. The classification of each exported item has to be declared by the sender. Exemptions should also be declared as an ECCN number (there are various ECCN numbers designed exactly for that). Without ECCN the sender fails basic Export Compliance checks.
- dvdkon 5y ago
  This is one of many problems with manufacturing products in the western world. Not only is shipping usually much cheaper ~than~ from China (and you have to get the parts from east Asia anyway, most of the time), you also need to deal with a whole host of certifications, export restrictions and generally convoluted bureaucracy. It sometimes seems that the rules are designed to scare off hardware (and other) startups. Basing yourself in China you can manufacture cheaper, sidestep most of these issues and basically chuck uncertified products with shoddy and falsely filled customs labels at customers everywhere. If we actually want electronics manufacturing to come back, we'll have to sort those problems out, small enterprises matter too, not just the ones wealthy enough to have this sorted out by sheer brute force.
VLM 5y ago
Do you need an EIN on the package label? https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1145?language=en_US https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1145?language=en_US Interestingly it seems to be the fault of the Census Bureau wanting to provide aggregate economic activity reports rather than border patrol themselves. Nothing more fun than watching two departments try to "cooperate" which is why you're probably not getting much help from Customs.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bombcar 5y ago
I’ve always included a proforma invoice and an ECCN when sending anything international (except letters). Perhaps some software change happened internally that no longer defaults to something, or the clerk isn’t allowed to deduce the ECCN anymore.
AnthonBerg 5y ago
A freight forwarding service like MyUS.com could be of help here. First, the customer/recipient can use a freight forwarding service to get the stuff shipped to them without the seller having to consider export procedure at all; The customer just has the seller ship to their US freight forwarding address and then the service handles export and reshipment. Freight forwarding services are a natural accumulator of export protocol know-how. It’s their specialization. Secondly, the freight forwarder might be able to advise on best practices. It might be in their interest to raise attention to themselves and accumulate good will, as well as to demonstrate what particular suffering it is that they alleviate. There’s also a free business idea here: Freight forwarding services that handle from-one -to-many shipping. (Most of those that I am familiar are from-many-to-one. From many shippers to my personal account.)
- dawnerd 5y ago
  There’s actually quite a few one to many. They’re designed mostly for cross border distribution (Canada to US where they’ll truck pallets over the border then drop off at usps in bulk). An example of one: https://www.goessa.com/packaging https://www.goessa.com/packaging
kirillzubovsky 5y ago
This story is why I love Hacker News.
thedogeye 5y ago
Tell this guy to call a customs brokerage like flexport. Entrepreneurs should focus on making things people want and connecting with customers. Turn everything else over to specialists with experience and scale. Most of all customs regs.
CodeWriter23 5y ago
I don’t think the trade names you’ve used in “Contents” are very descriptive. Something along the lines of “Hobby Electronics” might be more appropriate. I’d also consult a trade expert on this but I think spec’ing the origin as US may be part of the problem because no doubt there are Chinese components on your assemblies. Receiving countries will want to tariff commodities based on the actual origin.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

186 points by exar0815 5y ago

I'm sorry for your trouble. Customs are one of the most harmful things for society in our day and age. People in highly developed countries don't notice this much. Still, people from poorer countries with high bureaucracy and intervention in trade by customs cannot access good and cheaper stuff from elsewhere. In the end, a few official importers/exporters with good relations with the state apparatus plus corrupt customs agents benefit at the cost of the impoverished society.

Amezarak 5y ago
Conversely, cheap international goods can wipe out local industry, which can leave people in less developed economies permanently impoverished.
- henvic 5y ago
  This is a lie. If you live in a rich country you consume thousands of different things a day. If you live in a poor country and are really poor, you might consume hundreds. You consume way more than you produce. Don't fall for this trap. Otherwise, next thing you'll stop doing business with anyone else because it's better to live by your own means.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    The....what? If you make a product X and someone imports product X from a country where labour is 1/10th of the price, you go bust. In a lot of cases countries impose customs duties to protect those businesses, because it's better to have a working industry than cheap goods. Which part exactly is a lie?
    - henvic 5y ago
      Tariffs aren't imposed to protect the population, but specific well-connected players who lobby for such protections to avoid competition.
      - gambiting 5y ago
        Well, such a wild accusation requires a source. I can name several examples where tariffs were introduced specifically to protect local industries, mostly farmers, because it would be cheaper to just import foreign apples or carrots than locally grown, but obviously if you allow that to happen you don't have an apple or carrot growing industry next year. You could argue that "rich farm owners lobbied politicians to avoid competition" but you couldn't be any further from the truth. It was demanded by the farmer cooperatives and unions through protests, not some wealthy magnates.
        sokoloff 5y ago
        Is it more important to serve the farmers or the broad population who wants to eat apples and carrots?
        mind-blight 5y ago
        It really depends on the context. Focusing only on the price a costumer pays as your main metric ignores a lot of potentially negative externalities. One recent example in the US: a lot of small local business were suffering because the Chinese government was heavily subsidizing shipments to the US. So much so that it was cheaper in some places to get a product mailed from China than from across the street. The US started pushing back with tariffs while appealing too the universal postal union postal union. That kept the US businesses from going under while the UPU slowly went through the process of forcing china to follow their rules. And that's ignoring pollution, all the negatives that happen for the whole population when an industry and/or small businesses collapse within a country, and other negative externalities
      - wizzwizz4 5y ago
  - whatever1 5y ago
    Protectionism seems to be working great for China though
    - astrange 5y ago
      It's not really working that well except that some of it serves their other ends, like being able to enforce laws on local companies better. What's much more important is they have good industrial policy, export discipline, and that unreasonably good deal with the UPU that lets them send mail to the US for cheaper than we can send it inside the country.
      - whatever1 5y ago
        By not allowing amazon, google etc to do business in their country they enabled the development of huge, profitable corporations like Alibaba, Tencent etc that now employ advanced personnel like software developers, ML engineers etc, invest in university research, and overall have great positive impact in their economy. That is in direct contrast to what economists have been suggesting to us (aka the decision of China to restrict multinational corps to deploy their high tech would limit their growth)
        throwaway2048 5y ago
        Yep the idea that protectionism doesn't work and is harmful is in direct contravention to how every single advanced industrial economy developed. Its a self serving idea pushed by people who benefit massively.
        astrange 5y ago
        They have Baidu because they have the industrial policy, higher education system and subsidies to produce Baidu. If another country banned Google they would simply not have Google and that would be it. Note that Yandex and VK exist in Russia without having to ban all competition.
        whatever1 5y ago
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    In aggregate, we produce and consume an equal amount.
- astrange 5y ago
  Being able to buy stuff cheaper is actually good because both supply and demand exist. A better way to grow an economy is to do "export discipline", the opposite of import restriction, where you force your local industries to be international quality so that other countries buy from you.
  - Amezarak 5y ago
    That might be great if the good we're talking about is consumer electronics. (At least economically. Environmentally or socially perhaps we'd be better off without consumer electronics.) It's difficult for me to see how this works for the farmers and textile manufacturers. Underdeveloped economies by definition don't have much advanced industry. If you wipe out local producers of necessities you have virtually nothing left and no base to build on to develop advanced industry. I'm also not really sure this has turned out well for advanced countries like the US, but it definitely does make part of the country richer. I'm leery of any argument that claims that any given economic policy is an unmitigated good with no contingencies or tradeoffs.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      If foreign food or textiles are cheaper than your local production in a developing nation, it seems your population is suffering from those inflated prices and the aggregate good of the nation may very well be improved by having more food and clothing available at lower-than-current prices. Anything less is forcing your local population to subsidize the inefficient-but-domestic production of goods.
      - blululu 5y ago
        There’s an old joke about a statistician who drowned in water that was only one meter deep - On Average. Thinking in terms of aggregate value neglects the possibility that you will create winners and losers in such a scenario and creating a system of transfers to share the aggregate surplus is politically difficult.
        5y ago
- clairity 5y ago
  in a similar vein, i could drown in a bathtub, but it's not likely. more rationale is needed here around whether that risk is worth considering seriously. the econ 101 idea that tariffs are always bad (something that invariably comes up in these kinds of discussions) is only true in perfectly spherical, frictionless worlds populated by instantaneously rational actors. tariffs actually can work in the real world (to develop a fledgling industry, for example), but it can't be a one-off holy-grail policy, but rather part of a holistic, coordinated program.
magicalhippo 5y ago
Seems like main issue you have is with corruption, not customs. Corruption is bad regardless. I'm happy our customs is making it harder for people to import all kinds of illegal and/or dangerous goods, like weapons and assorted chemicals pretending to be medicine or drugs, into our country.
- antihero 5y ago
  The only thing I really care about for customs is bombs and human trafficking. I wish they would focus on those things and not just getting in the way of things. Maddening that my tax money is spent on preventing me doing stuff.
  - sterlind 5y ago
    you should also be concerned about pests riding along with your fruit, ready to destroy your country's ecosystem. there's boring yet legitimate stuff to scan for.

dominik-2020 5y ago

Maybe ask a customs broker?

gambiting 5y ago
This is the correct answer if you run a business. Customs brokers accept responsibility for making sure the packages go through the process successfully and usually have access to customer support channels normal mortals don't have.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  While I agree, this shouldn't be the case though. The lack of transparency and accountability from a government agency is absurd but then again, these values don't seem to matter anymore. This person should be able to get an explanation as to why their shipments were declined by customs. It's absurd that they have seemingly unquestionable authority from the general public. I supposed you could take them to court and figure it out, but in most cases, I doubt that's a viable route.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Absolutely 1000% agreed. But this parson specifically made a blog post basically saying "I run a business, I'm screwed, please help". Well, the immediate step would be to pay a broker to make sure those packages leave the US successfully and be doesn't lose customers. Then he can contact his representatives and complain second.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      Seems like the same issue would affect any rando cleaning out their basement with eBay too. As a Canadian, I can see why so few Americans want to ship internationally. Which is a negative economically.
ineedasername 5y ago
Yes, you have to pay them of course if you use their services, but it's also possible you can call one up and get a nice person who will take a minute or two & freely tell you if there's a current issue they're aware of.

fortran77 5y ago

What's amazing is there's no recourse.

marcinzm 5y ago
That's pretty much par for course with the USPS. One of the selling points of UPS/FedEx is that they have actual proper customer service (at least for large accounts).
- Natsu 5y ago
  That makes me wonder if shipping it via UPS or similar would get them more information?
- 4oh9do 5y ago
  One time a USPS delivery person stole my package. I know this because the tracking information a USPS clerk looked up for me showed the delivery person marking the package as delivered while being nowhere near the delivery address. In fact, nowhere near an address at all. It was marked as delivered to a street-intersection which houses a vacant field. The USPS clerk acknowledged this, but said that because there were no other complaints about the delivery person that day, there was nothing they could do. So it seems like USPS delivery people are literally allowed to steal one item of mail a day.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Maybe he drove off, remembered he had to register your package, and then stopped to register it as delivered. Later a thief took it from your mailbox?
  - dataflow 5y ago
    I've seen USPS packages get marked as "delivered" quite a while after they've been physically delivered. Like half an hour later, if not more. Unless it was physically impossible to get to the marked location within that amount of time, I don't think you can assume the timing to mean anything as to its actual delivery.

spdustin 5y ago

What’s being shipped? You may not think it’s relevant, but if the author omits it from their post, they certainly do.

rssoconnor 5y ago
The image claims the contents are * plastic carrying case * computer memory module
marcinzm 5y ago
It's a blog on a site which sells things and the audience is presumably people who buy things on the site rather than hackernews: https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/ https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/
occamrazor 5y ago
The photo shows a shipment containing a “computer memory module”.
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gipp 5y ago
There's a whole column in the table for it, or you could just check the shop page. It's electronics components for retro computing, basically.
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newacct583 5y ago
The site sells a bunch of retrocomputing emulator products. It's not at all unlikely that some of this looks like hacking or R/E devices and fell afoul of someone's filter (or maybe they sell a keylogger or something unsavory that I just didn't see). The author, as others are pointing out, should hire a customs broker. This is a licensed professional who knows the process (and often the specific employees at the customs office) and can get answers to questions that can't be answered in stickers on packages. Or, if there's really a law enforcement angle here, they should call a lawyer. But HN isn't going to provide much help.

4oh9do 5y ago

At least they receive their packages back. Compare that to the eBay Global Shipping Program - where if eBay decides that your package violates some opaque rule, neither the sender nor the recipient receives the package. eBay keeps it.

gambiting 5y ago
Surely.........they reimburse both sides for it? Otherwise that's just theft or at the absolute minimum fraud. Ebay is absolutely free to reject any packages for any reason whatsoever, but they should always return them.
- 4oh9do 5y ago
  Even with reimbursement, it is still theft. It's like if I buy a bike from you, and the delivery truck driver decides to keep the bike for themselves and instead gives me cash and drives off, with me having no say in this.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    Well.........kinda, but he's not stealing from you, he's stealing from the delivery company at that point. The delivery company accepts responsibility for the parcel when they collect it, and the contract usually says that either they will deliver the parcel or pay you back X where X is agreed beforehand. So if either of those two things happen they successfully complete their part of the contract. If the driver takes your parcel then it's up to the delivery company to prosecute, not you.
    - jMyles 5y ago
      Certainly he's stealing opportunity from you. Maybe you really needed the bike on the agreed-upon date.
      - gambiting 5y ago
        If you need compensation for loss of opportunity and loss of profit and such, then there are companies which will happily accept liability for such for a sufficient financial incentive. Regular consumer-grade postage services very specifically exclude liability for anything outside of the delivery itself.

jupp0r 5y ago

Try to ship the returned packages with Fedex or UPS.

ziml77 5y ago
How would that help? FedEx and UPS don't have some special privilege to bypass customs.
- oaiey 5y ago
  But maybe a different customs location/officer.
- magicalhippo 5y ago
  However at least here in Norway, they do know who to reach at customs to get an answer as to why it was rejected. It might take a few bounces but typically they get an answer and is able to sort it out.
- ryanlol 5y ago
  They do get special customs handling and can definitely assist you with these issues instead of just sending things back.
- CodeWriter23 5y ago
  There is something to be said for packaging products such that they are not selected for screening. Won’t help this guy now, his stuff is flagged. But once we started shipping our international orders in a bubble envelope instead of a small box, we had many fewer returns as a result of unpaid import duty by the recipient.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  Customs has a complicated relationship with postal vs. courier imports. Customs hates postal imports/exports because they have to deal with low values, low-reimbursement and end-users that may not be, ahem, diplomatic when either side makes an error/fails to comprehend an incomprehensible set of regulations. And the usual treatment of individual end-users with ambiguous resentment like this case. If everyone switched all imports/exports to Fedex/UPS/etc and customs only had to deal with brokers, they'd both be much much happier. Customs can just sit in an office receiving digitized info from the couriers and decide what they want to inspect/review instead of sifting by hand. Mostly, customs just ignores the postal stream and lets things slide through without 100% correct paperwork, but I'm sure Fedex/UPS regularly lobbies against this laissez-faire approach.

otterley 5y ago

Try reaching out to your local Congressperson’s office. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Edit: also, your local Postmaster.

CodeWriter23 5y ago
Customs != USPS
- otterley 5y ago
  That's where the "congressperson" part comes in.

arbuge 5y ago

As one of the comments on the original article points out: "I notice your ‘Signature’ is a printed string." First thing that jumped out at me too when I read that label. I wonder if that's the reason. As far as I know, an actual signature is required there.

marcinzm 5y ago
If it's a pre-printed computer generated label then all you need is the printed name.
- cbmuser 5y ago
  I don’t know about the US, but that’s definitely not allowed in Germany. It _must_ be signed by hand and I‘m pretty confident that the packages were rejected because of that. If they aren’t rejected by USPS, they _will_ be rejected by German customs.
  - marcinzm 5y ago
    >If they aren’t rejected by USPS, they _will_ be rejected by German customs. No they won't be, I've sent many packages to Germany using these types of "signatures" with zero issues. This in fact how every pre-printed USPS international label looks like (ie: Etsy, Pirate Ship, etc, etc.). Please don't make absolute statements about things you don't have first hand experience with.
    - arbuge 5y ago
      That's interesting. PayPal's built-in mailing software, which is what we use for international shipments, will not print signatures for you in this space - you have to sign international labels by hand. Seems like an oversight on their part if you're correct.

purpleidea 5y ago

Maybe they have a crappy algorithm that sees "EMU" and thinks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu and says "nope, we're not touching animals, you need a special form"? Either way, the lack of transparency is a huge problem. I thought the United States had all those guns to prevent the State from messing with them? Not sure that seems to have helped here. Good luck figuring this out! Go to the news media.

Const-me 5y ago

The envelope says “plastic carrying case and computer memory module”. Photo of the content there: https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/product/floppy-emu-model-c-bundle/ https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/product/floppy-emu-model-... I understand how technically that’s true. Still, I can see how for a non-technical person a PCB with OLED display and buttons does not look like a memory module. 99.99% of memory modules sold are DIMM or M2 SSD modules. They look very differently from the content of the package. I would try printing slightly more descriptive labels on these packages. Maybe “Custom aftermarket replacement part for 1979-1983 Macintosh computers”

maxerickson 5y ago
Based on the price, it is https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/product/mac-rom-inator-ii-atom-simm/ https://www.bigmessowires.com/shop/product/mac-rom-inator-ii...

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snthd 5y ago

FOIA request?

jonpurdy 5y ago

As an aside, I’ve got a ADB Wombat from BMoW and it’s just awesome. Allows me to easily use my 1993 Apple Adjustable Keyboard with my modern Mac. Edit: forgot to mention that it also works great for using a USB mouse or keyboard on older Macs.

gambitown 5y ago

Your package is missing Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) [0], duh. Add a proper ECCN number (such as "EAR99" [1]), according the rules and regulations that apply to the specific product you're shipping. FYI, export violations can reach up to $1 million per violation, prison for up to 20 years, and administrative penalties. [0] https://www.shippingsolutions.com/blog/six-basic-steps-for-export-compliance https://www.shippingsolutions.com/blog/six-basic-steps-for-e... [1] EAR99 is not a free pass: https://www.shippingsolutions.com/blog/ear99-isnt-a-free-pass-for-export-compliance https://www.shippingsolutions.com/blog/ear99-isnt-a-free-pas...

hervature 5y ago
This is what the author puts in the comments on their site: Regarding the ECCN information: it’s my understanding that by writing NOEEI 30.37(a) on the label in the box for AES/ITN/Exemption, I’m stating that the items don’t require an export license or permit and are valued under $2500, so no commercial invoice or ECCN numbers should be required. In other words, I think what I have included on the form should be OK as-is.
- gambitown 5y ago
  > so no ECCN numbers should be required. That's wrong. The classification of each exported item has to be declared by the sender. Exemptions should also be declared as an ECCN number (there are various ECCN numbers designed exactly for that). Without ECCN the sender fails basic Export Compliance checks.
dvdkon 5y ago
This is one of many problems with manufacturing products in the western world. Not only is shipping usually much cheaper ~than~ from China (and you have to get the parts from east Asia anyway, most of the time), you also need to deal with a whole host of certifications, export restrictions and generally convoluted bureaucracy. It sometimes seems that the rules are designed to scare off hardware (and other) startups. Basing yourself in China you can manufacture cheaper, sidestep most of these issues and basically chuck uncertified products with shoddy and falsely filled customs labels at customers everywhere. If we actually want electronics manufacturing to come back, we'll have to sort those problems out, small enterprises matter too, not just the ones wealthy enough to have this sorted out by sheer brute force.

VLM 5y ago

Do you need an EIN on the package label? https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1145?language=en_US https://help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1145?language=en_US Interestingly it seems to be the fault of the Census Bureau wanting to provide aggregate economic activity reports rather than border patrol themselves. Nothing more fun than watching two departments try to "cooperate" which is why you're probably not getting much help from Customs.

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bombcar 5y ago

I’ve always included a proforma invoice and an ECCN when sending anything international (except letters). Perhaps some software change happened internally that no longer defaults to something, or the clerk isn’t allowed to deduce the ECCN anymore.

AnthonBerg 5y ago

A freight forwarding service like MyUS.com could be of help here. First, the customer/recipient can use a freight forwarding service to get the stuff shipped to them without the seller having to consider export procedure at all; The customer just has the seller ship to their US freight forwarding address and then the service handles export and reshipment. Freight forwarding services are a natural accumulator of export protocol know-how. It’s their specialization. Secondly, the freight forwarder might be able to advise on best practices. It might be in their interest to raise attention to themselves and accumulate good will, as well as to demonstrate what particular suffering it is that they alleviate. There’s also a free business idea here: Freight forwarding services that handle from-one -to-many shipping. (Most of those that I am familiar are from-many-to-one. From many shippers to my personal account.)

dawnerd 5y ago
There’s actually quite a few one to many. They’re designed mostly for cross border distribution (Canada to US where they’ll truck pallets over the border then drop off at usps in bulk). An example of one: https://www.goessa.com/packaging https://www.goessa.com/packaging

kirillzubovsky 5y ago

This story is why I love Hacker News.

thedogeye 5y ago

Tell this guy to call a customs brokerage like flexport. Entrepreneurs should focus on making things people want and connecting with customers. Turn everything else over to specialists with experience and scale. Most of all customs regs.

CodeWriter23 5y ago

I don’t think the trade names you’ve used in “Contents” are very descriptive. Something along the lines of “Hobby Electronics” might be more appropriate. I’d also consult a trade expert on this but I think spec’ing the origin as US may be part of the problem because no doubt there are Chinese components on your assemblies. Receiving countries will want to tariff commodities based on the actual origin.

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