Export Shipper

That seems reasonable to me; a few years ago I shipped some items to Australia via USPS with no problems.

Do you know if there will be customs fees? If so, those probably should be prepaid also, to avoid long delay in clearing customs. See eg and .

Good suggestion. I'll tell my customer about that and see if it applies for this.

Under $1000 value (Australian dollars) per shipment, there is no charge imposed by Australian Customs. USPS flat rate international boxes are very good, I find. Being flat rate, it's sometimes economical to buy a bit more to fill a box for no extra freight charge, as long as it doesn't go over weight. The vendor has to do a little more work to figure it out, but an extra sale is good.

I may have some parts going to Australia soon. So far it looks like from a purely convenient standpoint is USPS is the easiest to deal with. Parts will fit in international FRBs.

Comments? Warnings?

Customer is prepaying for the parts, so no CODs to deal with or anything silly like that.

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Great idea, great service....and only a penny a day!

Its actually under AU$1000 for the parts and the cost of MAIL. If you ship by any other method the importer is liable to pay duty (depending on country of origin) and GST on the whole lot - works out at about another

25% on average.

Just an aside with the Aussie dollar now buying about US$1.06 to $1.10 its become very economical to import goods from the USA as long as they are kept below the duty and GST threshold of AU$1000. There are plenty of niche markets for enineering tools and the likes - which are often 200% to

300% more expensive to buy in Australia than importing from the US or EU. Quite a few smart cookies are selling into Australia where they can sell for a higher price than they would in the USA but still substantially cheaper than in Aus.

About 8 - 12 months ago the AU$ bought close to 80 cents US - world currency prices are telling the USA that they need to start balancing their books.

To keep costs down, first choice is mail. Or maybe a courier delivery to your door. Any method that involves going to a depot to pick up goods is usually costly in time and additional cash, for who knows why. Other points about sending stuff to Australia - Gotta be biologically clean, otherwise quarantine will require you to clean/fumigate which has to be done by a qualified company $$$. Common with used vehicle/parts that have dirt on them. If packed in a crate, natural timber can be a headache to get through quarantine, again costly as the default attitude is that it's infested with alien bugs unless you can prove otherwise. Use engineered timber such as plywood instead. Unfortunately, I've had to pay for fumigation even though I advised the merchant of the Oz requirements and that was ignored.

Do you have to wire the money to the shipper, as part of the deal?

LOL. No this isn't a scam. A designer I have worked with before, the client, and I worked together on the designs and product implementation. The customer pays for setup costs and a deposit before I do the CAM work. They will be paying me for the balance on parts and shipping when they are ready to but before they ship.

If the value, including freight costs, is under $500 Oz, there is no duty & GST charged. It may have been increased to $1000 but I am not sure.

No animal products may be imported without a quarantine licence.

Alan

There is a host of ways that international payments can now be made.

Lookup "incoterms" to see the common trading terms used.

Probably the safest method nowadays is to use eBay and Paypal with both buyer and seller protection its become the small value escrow service by default over the past ten years. Once you start getting into the tens of thousands of dollars you should only involve trusted commercial banks.