Overseas Shipping Label changes / Import costs

[CheshireElf]

This month I had a similar issue to Anthony Burgess, who posted earlier today. Normally my order is labelled as "Books" and is therefore exempt from import tax, and more importantly the surcharge our customs people add on to calculate the import tax.

This month the shipping label printed by Paizo has check boxes for
"Documents",
"Commerce Sample",
"Merchandise",
"Dangerous Goods" (presumably anything goblin related),
"Gift" or
"Humanitarian Donation"

But no mention of "Books".

Is this to comply with recent changes in the US Postal Service or similar?

My subscription is for the Adventure Path, Comic, Player Companion and Map Pack/Mat. If I remove the Map Pack, would this result in my order being re-classified as "Documents", or is there some new coding in the system that sets things to "Merchandise" as a default?

Thanks.

[Sharaya]

Can you email us a picture of the label? We'll take a further look at this as soon as we can. Our email address is [e-mail]. Thanks!

[Ross Byers]

Assuming Paizo is using the PS 2976 customs form or an acceptable analog, those check boxes are for the nature of the shipment. If this is a regular purchase, that type is 'Merchandise'. ('Documents' is meant for letters, legal documents, or other correspondence, not books.)

But there is supposed to be an itemized table below that (as you can see in my link), which is where 'Books', 'Toys', or whatever should go.

[CheshireElf]

I've emailed a copy of the label - my items all appeared as "Merchandise"

[Cyria]

Hello,

i have got a similar problem (destination: germany).

US-postservice glues their own label over the paizo-Label, the september subscription package (all books) was labled "merchandiese" on this and i got smacked with 19% instead of 7% customs-fee because it was delivered direct via the german post-service (most of the time i have to pick the packages up at the customs-office myself so i can correct this mistake by opening the package).

This is going on since about the end of last year (only one or two packages had their original and super-correct paizo-labels). I found no reason why this few packages had their original-Labels and the other ones not.

I fear paizo can not do anything about this becaus it is US-Postservice business, but hope that this information may eventually help.

Best regards

Iris

[Vrischika111]

similar issue noted here.
I cancelled maps & cards to have books-only shipment, but still "merchandises" on them (Belgium)

[Sara Marie]

We've had issues in the past with our customs labels being overwritten. I have passed this thread along to our Chief Operations Officer so he can look into why this is still occurring.

thanks
sara marie