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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

As I understand it this all comes down to the insane framework of the Universal Postal Union, which has been discussed here before [1][2], which seem to limit how much a postal service can charge another member postal service, which results in a huge tax-subsidized advantage.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20965145

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21072822

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This is no longer the case. They have bypassed the postal system in my area entirely. My packages in a major US city are delivered via courier. Epacket type shipping you are referencing takes like 1-2 months while their privately arranged transport took 6 days from order to my door.

They also avoid US customs fees by shipping to groups of customers in just less than $800 packets.

Yea AliExpress did this years and years ago.

In theory the stuff they send should go through customs, but they practically DDoS the system by sending the 20 things you ordered in 20 packages, all marked below the price that would warrant a customs declaration - no matter the actual cost of the item.

The customs over here would've had to hire a significant percentage of the whole population just to manage the packages...

I've never had a single AliExpress package be held at customs and I've been ordering stuff from there before it was cool.

>>> while their privately arranged transport took 6 days from order to my door.

Is there an uber-for-plane-luggage that I don't know about ?

Believe it or not, FedEx. Just ask for a “tie-on tag”.

DHL for Temu - I bought my replacement 16oz gloves from there cuz there's no way I'm spending $100 on Fairtex from Amazon.

No, Universal Postal Union was revised to combat this. This did give a temporary minor price hike on AliExpress, but it's effect in terms of limiting packages send seems like nothing now.

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