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Comment by ericwood | Hacker News Reader

I had a $300 order (ordered late January, arrived last week) and was hit with the tariffs via UPS along with their bogus processing fee as another commenter mentioned. They wait for it to reach the US before holding it hostage. Would recommend using DHL if at all possible, as they make dealing with it a lot less painful.

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> their bogus processing fee

At least here in Norway, though similar in many other countries that I know, it's not entirely bogus.

Typically there are real costs involved with submitting a customs declaration, especially if it requires actual people looking at the invoice and filling out the customs declaration based on it. An order from JCLPCB or similar would typically fall in that category.

Then there's the duties. Either they hold the goods until you've paid, in which case they need storage space and bookkeeping, along with inspections from customs every so often. Or they just pay up front and bill you after the fact. In either case there are real costs involved.

That said they're certainly not a charity, and I do think they exploit a bit the fact that often the importer doesn't have much of a say or knowledge in picking the shipping company. Perhaps the seller only deals with UPS for example.

I understand it takes more on their end but I hate that it's not baked in the the base shipping fee. They know they're going to have to do the extra work, why not take that into account on the base price?

JLCPCB recently started offering them as a shipping option, and they tend to be $5-10 under DHL's quote. The DHL price takes the additional processing fees into account and I'm not left with a nasty surprise in addition to the tariffs/customs fees.

> They know they're going to have to do the extra work, why not take that into account on the base price?

There's the option of doing it yourself or have some third party doing it, though you usually still end up paying some fee to the express company.

A lot of business customers do that, at least here, especially if they got goods with duties where they might not be confident in the goods classification[1] done by the express company, or if they have exemptions.

Though as I mentioned earlier, I do agree there's too little transparency here, and that they're taking advantage of it. I suspect the only way they'll improve is if customers start voting with their wallet.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonized_System#Classificati...

I'm not aware of a way to do this in the US, or else I'd absolutely take this on myself. For JLC the classification code is chosen by me at checkout, and I use the industry standard code for the product I sell.

> For JLC the classification code is chosen by me at checkout

Export or import classification? The first six digits are the same, but the rest vary per country so if you specify the export tariff codes then the one doing the import declaration will still have to do the import classification.

Haven't had to classify when ordering from JLC, then again I've only ordered PCBs so that might be why.

I'm not sure. When you use their PCBA services you choose from a large list that gets fairly granular as the last step in the ordering process.

Bullshit. It's an entirely predictable cost at the time of shipping, and should be built into _the cost of shipping_ as paid for by the party _paying for the service_. This is simply a means to double dip, knowing that the receiver doesn't know better in advance and can't do anything about it once they find out.

The buyer/importer is paying for the service, either directly or indirectly, so matters little in that regard. The seller ain't a charity either and will pass on any costs. You're not getting DDP for free.

But I agree that the transparency regarding customs processing fees is very lacking. Obviously they don't have an incentive as long as customers don't see this as a differentiator.

It's not about getting it for free, it's getting billed at the time money is already changing hands.

But you can already get this, just demand DDP terms[1] when buying. Seller might refuse in which case you can take your business elsewhere, or they might accept but charge extra for the service.

For example DigiKey allows me to select[2] between DDP or CPT, which means I have to pay for importing the goods[3].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#DDP_%E2%80%93_Delive...

[2]: https://www.digikey.no/en/help-support/delivery-information/...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms#Allocations_of_costs...

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