We’ve had a few things mailed from the States here, and we now have a good idea of shipping costs.
Using USPS, most items seem to ship for about $50. This is either using the flat rate boxes where weight isn’t an issue, or shipping relatively light things in larger boxes. Light things in small boxes will probably be less than this. Transit time seems to be about a week, but it varies depending on if it hits customs over a weekend.
When you ship something here, you declare its value. This value is used to calculate how much the customs fess are on our side. So, if you send something valued at $100, the customs people translate that into Euro. Using a rough conversion of 1.40 dollars per Euro (it’s not quite thaaaat bad), we have a value of about 72 Euro. They then take 20% as the customs fee, so our $100 item has a customs fee of about 15 Euro. They then add on a 6.50 Euro delivery charge. So when that package arrives, we pay about 20 Euro to actually get it. The delivery guy also comes at 7:30AM and doesn’t have a ton of change. It makes things interesting.
From the few experiences I’ve had with this, it is definitely NOT WORTH IT. If we can get it here, even for higher cost than in the states, we still save money, simply because anything will have $75 of cost tacked on from shipping and customs fees. I got kicked pretty bad with the Xbox (especially because it DIDN’T WORK!). I don’t want that to happen again. So, maybe clear things with us before you send them? Just in case? This also means no Christmas presents from you guys! Do you hear me?!
We might send you a little something though. 😉
No Christmas presents? No Christmas presents? Boo-hoo!