Amazon.com, under the Global Shipping program, collects some money as "Import fees deposit". For BDs, this is roughly 26.5%, for other item categories the rate is different. The fees are collected up front and the freight carriers are told to collect the money from Amazon and not the end customer. If the duty amount is more than collected, Amazon bears the excess amount. If amount is less, the customer is refunded the excess amount collected up front.
I have been ordering BDs from Amazon.com for over a year. Each time the import fees deposit was collected. But the carrier (mostly Aramex) never was required to pay duties. And all the times the fees were refunded back to me (within 60 days) as a credit to my credit card. However, I did loose out on exchange rate (banks charge selling rate + 3.5% surcharge in debit while crediting they use the buying rate and no surcharge is paid back).
I have often wondered whether I should sometimes use services such as Borderlinx, Aramex SnS or iShopInternational or PPO, etc. Amazon's shipping charges are very high and so is the "import fees deposit". However, a few checks and balances have held me back:
- With others, I have to use the US drop-ship address and Amazon ends up charging about 7% sales tax on the order
- All others base their shipping charges either on weight or volume or both (charge whatever is more); while shipping BDs, the weight and volume is unknown.
- A hindsight calculation (after package was delivered to me), showed me that the shipping cost is not way cheap, although Amazon is still more by 10% or so.
- If duty is not charged, I get the refund from Amazon; not so with others
- Others will charge the import duty but will not provide the customs duty payment receipt (Yes. This is clearly mentioned on their respective web sites)
- So with other carriers, I may end up paying Custom Duty, even if nothing was charged and paid
In the end, with the US state sales tax payment and high chances of duty refund, Amazon.com and others, the total outflow, more or less works out to be the same.
But all this is true with respect to BD/DVD merchandise. For electronics, things WILL BE different. Duty will be charged and paid. Freight charges can be estimated up from because the specification of the item will most likely mention carton size, gross weight, net weight etc. So you must do what looks like the cheapest option.
