Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.bundlebox.com/

Bundle Box gives you a US shipping address, then posts the items to you.

Unless it costs an idiot amount to get stuff shipped, I cannot see how this is anything but A Good Thing.

Oh. Oh dear.



That's a guess at a Zune. £97. For shipping.

That's got to be a mistake, surely?

Oh right, maybe it just went nuts.
Getting a Sony E Reader Touch will cost you £238 from play, or £230 from Bundle Box (and Amazon.com).

The fact that you have to pay duty is a right arse.

A MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.53GHz will cost you £1149 from Apple or £1094 from Bundle Box.
They're not grabbing me so far

I suspect the bostin will come in to play with stuff that people refuse to ship to the UK for whatever reason. The Lynch edition of Eraserhead, for instance.

The following list is a non-exclusive sampling of items that are either restricted and cannot be shipped: Goods that are perishable or hazardous, eg. food, coffee or drink items, live animals, plants, chemicals, hair spray, cigarette lighters, perfumes, cleaning and toner fluids; Goods that are subject to excise duty, eg. tobacco products, alcoholic beverages (beer, wine and spirits); Goods with import restrictions, eg. unlicensed drugs, offensive weapons, firearms, explosives and ammunitions, pornographic material, products made with animal skin (furs), lottery tickets and gambling devices, government IDs and licenses, uniform and badges or items that claim to be, or that look similar to, government identification issue; Goods that are categorized as high risk/uninsurable, eg. money, coins, gemstones, credit cards, bullion, antiques, craftware, glassware, liquids, paintings. Please contact us in advance if you have any doubts via the Bundle Box message center.

Yeah, but Eraserhead is only unavailable here due to someone other than Lynch owning the distribution rights for the UK.

This sounds perfect to me just yesterday I was saying how I needed to import some goods that are perishable or hazardous, eg. food, coffee or drink items, live animals, plants, chemicals, hair spray, cigarette lighters, perfumes, cleaning and toner fluids; Goods that are subject to excise duty, eg. tobacco products, alcoholic beverages (beer, wine and spirits); Goods with import restrictions, eg. unlicensed drugs, offensive weapons, firearms, explosives and ammunitions, pornographic material, products made with animal skin (furs), lottery tickets and gambling devices, government IDs and licenses, uniform and badges or items that claim to be, or that look similar to, government identification issue; Goods that are categorized as high risk/uninsurable, eg. money, coins, gemstones, credit cards, bullion, antiques, craftware, glassware, liquids, paintings so I can use this!

EDIT: FUCK!

Finding someone to mark items as gifts in the USA is close to impossible, given that they are a very law abiding country.

This is why it pays to have friends there. When I got my first Alienware I looked at sound proof matting. Well firstly it was impossible to get as we don't have an Alienware outlet her (surplus stock and parts) and even buying 3rd party stuff was about £40.

In the end I paid about £9 for the matting and £9 for the shipping as gift.

Three people have sent me coffee and each time it vanished. I would imagine because of the drug smuggling thing/never get an apology from customs. So when my mate finally came over a couple of weeks ago I got him to bring me 10lb of DD heavenly hazelnut

Next week he's sending me my spangly Alienware light up joypad. In return I have to send him the last Harry Potter book (quote - with the cool English cover )

Daft apeth

99% of the stuff I get from the States is marked as a gift by the seller. And I get 100+ CDs a year.

Ebay?

Not soley eBay, but I do get a lot from there.

On Ebay my friend J has had some success (he's the extra extra extra large dude).

He has no choice but to order all his clothes from the USA because we don't do the 3XXL here. So he's built a bit of a friendship with a few sellers..

I ordered a Larry the cable guy DVD from Amazon UK without realising the seller was based in Rhode Island, but thankfully didn't get stung..

Every time I have ever asked an Ebay seller to mark it as a gift they have refused though, saying they don't want to get caught.

Also : I would imagine it's pretty easy ordering small cheap items like DVDs and the likes and getting it marked as a gift. I would imagine they would be a lot less willing to send expensive items and lie though.

I've had packages of stuff totalling in the $100+ range marked as gifts or promotional CDs direct from the producers. Sounds like you just buy from pricks.

Nah, it was probably a NJ thing. East coast and all that. They tend to be very honest and law abiding. Well, apart from the Mafia types

One of my main suppliers is Relapse Records based in Philadelphia, New Jersey. How much more proof do I need to produce to counteract the "Finding someone to mark items as gifts in the USA is close to impossible, given that they are a very law abiding country." statement?

I've never had a 'gift' problem for the USA either. All the T-shirt websites I use do it.

As do many of the suppliers my wife uses for her craft stuff. They even split packages to keep it below the threshold for duty.

Stupid Bundle Box. I so wanted this to be good

Are the prices they quote what you'll definitely be charged or are they just preparing you for the worst? Also (someone might want to check this) I'm pretty sure that the threshold for import VAT is now more like £150 so it might still work out ok for smaller bits.

I found this on HMRC:



I'd bet Bundle Box are acting as customs/VAT collection agents and so what you see is what you pay. Possibly useful if absolutely need a US postal address, but probably not a way of avoiding the dreaded tax man.

"perfume or toilet waters"... mmm.

Me, too.

Top tip: The Customs website publishes the calculated exchange rate on your £18/£36 at the start of each month, and that is the rate applied throughout that month, whether the real rate goes up or down. So with a bit of planning, you don't have to guess whether your purchases will come in under the limit.

Phila is in PA the other side of the river.

I guess it just depends on the area you live in. I have tried numerous ebay places based in NJ since coming back (salt water taffy for example) and none would bend the rules and send as a gift. Same went for the Wawa stuff I wanted to order.

I believe you ! lol. You don't need to prove it, you've been lucky

So we've managed to cut it down from the entire country, to New Jersey, and now to the town you lived in. Okay. I suggest you stop buying stuff from the town you lived in if you want to avoid tax and customs charges.

It wasn't specifically the town. It was that I was looking for specific local things from the place I lived in.

Stop lying Dimrill.

America is Lawful Good.

I actually pulled down the crime statistics for New Jersey last night from 2008. They say "not very".

Because you are including the most violent crime filled city in the USA and the armpit. Camden and Jersey City.

Doesn't sound awfully very lawful, then. I AM NITPICKING AND IT IS FUN!

Yes, you are

Having a poke through the thread though it's possible that your stuffs didn't go over the £18.

Shame I'm not still there really, could have started some kind of beex importing thinger.

They almost always head over the £18 mark. In 10 years of buying stuff over the pond, I've been stung thrice. And each one was for stuff from movietyme.com or hmv Canadia.

This thread should be subtitled "Coffey gets lost in the post". It is excellent.

Doesn't say anything about not posting cars. Well, it doesn't have a category for actual cars. So I'll get them to post me my Ford GT as gearbox & parts cos it sort of is.....

Houses are cheap in the US. No customs duty on a house.

Well they are all made out of cheap plasterboard over there. Makes me think of the Three Little Pigs when I see the aftermath of a tornado.

Is that the third little pig's house?

That's the one made of bricks.

Payback for all that online thievery, innit?

To be fair, when there's a serious chance of an earthquake or tornado tearing your house to bits regardless of what it's made of, you tend to use cheap bits that are less likely to kill you when they collapse on the basement you are hiding in. See also: Japan's traditional paper-and-bamboo building materials. So I don't think it's short sightedness; far from it.

Apart from in Kobe where they still had the incredibly heavy tile rooftops, so the building buckled and swayed, and the roof fell down and crushed j00.

I love that.

I am liking the way that "BIG STOMPY BOOTS" now seems to mean "OH YES. THAT WAS A RATHER STUPID THING FOR ME TO SAY. THANKS FOR POINTING OUT THE ERRORS I MADE."

Do you really think I was serious with that statement? Really? I thought you wankers knew me by now.

Why not? It was perfectly correct.

Conundrum!