Asking doll companies to mark the value of your package down..?

Honestly, I don't care about "it's too much money!" - You pay for a luxury item, it's your duty to read up on the regulations reguarding taxation of import for luxury items within your own borders.
When you place the order, you are essentially agreeing to having to pay any fees that may be incurred during the process.
I've ordered 7 dolls in my time, 4 of which got caught in customs charges for varying amounts, and I paid it without complaint.
I look at it as such: I work(ed) in a grocery store, sucking down close to minimum wage at £5.77 per hour. They want to charge me £25-45. That's the best part of a day's work up to a full day's work, sure, but if the package were mis-represented, it were damaged or lost... That $250 is a fair bit more than a day's work to recover.
I've already paid a long amount of days worth of work to earn this luxury for myself, one more day is not going to hurt.

 

its fine as long as you put it just under the required price. e.g if a doll cost $500 and the customs thing is like $450, ask them to put it down as $440 or something. they'd usually do it.

 

No one likes customs fees, but we're aware of them and we're aware there are legalities. As a shipper of some expensive items myself, I don't believe in marking down packages. I do not offer it and make it clear if someone asks about it, what effect it has on insurance and that the potential loss is their responsibility, not mine. Now hearing companies do it without request makes me nervous. If they do that and something happens, they better take responsibility themselves or I would be fighting it.

 

It will NOT be damaged, stolen, or missent as long as it's sent by EMS...
And if you think $250 is a fair amount... Well... Maybe in your country.
My income each month is close to $350. >_>
I saved my income every month to buy these dolls, not to give my money away.
As I said, the money doesn't go to the government, but to the staff themselves.

 

There's...absolutely no guarantee of this. There's no guarantee of ANYTHING, honestly -- items sent EMS may be less likely to sustain damage or be misplaced than those sent surface mail, but that doesn't mean it CAN'T happen. EMS, like everything else, is still partially dependent on humans to work and humans make mistakes.

EMS is safer. We all know that it's the safest way to ship to/from other countries. However, there's a big difference between safer and completely safe. If it WAS completely safe, then there wouldn't be any need to be concerned -- but there are way, way too many stories out there about people whose dolls were lost or damaged in transit and they found out too late that, because the package was marked down, they had no way of getting all their money back.

I prefer to be cautious and covered rather than blindly trusting and burned.

 

Well... So far it never happens to me, or to you either, right? So I'm not worried. But in case that happens, it's my risk. I don't mind. Because doll companies will take care of it... They promise so.

 

fransyung - I'm with EksDee. Customs duties for your country are part of what you should expect to pay for your doll. If you are a liar, then it's between you and your conscience, but don't expect people who value honesty to validate your lies and tell you you're okay. And please don't play the poverty sympathy game, because it doesn't hold up - just look at your doll list. If you can afford that many expensive dolls, you can afford to save up that bit more to pay customs duty.

I'm also not sure why you have such blind faith that doll companies will take the bad consequences of your own dishonesty. Why should they? It's really unfair on them to expect them to lose money because you are dishonest.

 

Not only me... A lot of us are like that. Just read the posts from page 1 if you need proof... You are pointing your finger to a lot of people in here. And the companies as well. Even without me asking, they will always mark down the values. If you know that they are liars and your friends in this forum are liars, too... what should you do? On top of everything, I save up for my dolls. I don't buy other things because I know I can't afford other things if I want these dolls. I am not poor. In here, getting $350 a month is a luxury career!!! What I meant was that the custom tax for a doll is almost the same as my monthly salary! I didn't say that I was poor... LOL...

 

How many people do it is completely beside the point. A lot of people also shoplift or cheat on their taxes or speed when they drive. I still think it's wrong, and won't pretend otherwise. I'm not a twelve year old to be going "But everyone else does it,so it must be okay!"

How can you seriously say "if I think you're a liar"? Of course I do - you were the one who said you tell lies, not me. And you were the one whining that customs was too much money for your poor self to pay.*shrug* Maybe you should save that bit more for customs.

 

I lie... Yes, I do. But I don't think it's any of your business?

 

You've chosen to put your actions and your stream of excuses for them up on the forum for comment or debate, so that's what you got. And you seemed awfully sensitive about being called a liar when you are self-described as one. I suspect what you really wanted was for people to tell you that what you do is perfectly okay, and when you don't get the responses you want, it seems childish to fall back on "But it's not your business" - after all, you're the one who chose to tell me (and everyone on the forum) about it in the first place. On a debate thread, open for discussion.

Feel free to further excuse yourself or say "It's not your business!" or complain about unfairness as much as you like, of course, and you won't even be bothered by any negative responses, at least from me. I'm bored with you.

 

Show me where "doll companies" say this, if you don't mind? I'm curious, mostly because it sounds like a pretty bad business idea.

By the by, you do know that this statement doesn't look good on a forum whose business dealings hinge VERY heavily on personal honesty...right?

 

I noticed that the company had marked down the value on their own on the doll I ordered. My assumption at the time was that the marked down amount was the cost of production rather than the cost of sale. That way, if something happened, the company could replace it without losing money.
Of course, I could be completely wrong, too. I've just never had to deal with customs fees before, so I haven't really thought much about it.

 

I think that if the company marks the doll down of their own volition they ought to be responsible for replacing the damaged doll. However, if the customer requests it be undervalued and then something happens to it then they shouldn't be obligated to do anything about it. It's all about responsibility. Whoever is at fault for the undervaluing should take the consequences.

 

If you pay that much for something, then it just doesn't make sense to take such a high risk on things going wrong. I understand that the fees are a lot when it comes to the dolls, however, it would be more handy if something DID happen and you wanted your money back. I would personally never ask the company to mark the package down, but I havn't tried to make it a point to put the right price either. I have marked the price down on smaller items, (handmade doll clothes, wigs, etc.) at a customer's request though. However, when I did that, I let them know that I was not responsible if anything did happen to their package.

 

I personally don't care whether something is legal or not before I do it. The way I see, a fair amount of laws are put in place to help the government, not the people (is closet anarchist XP). I'm not going to think, hmm, better get them to put the proper price because otherwise it's breaking the law. I don't give a damn about that. If I can avoid arbitrary taxes, I will.

 

For me, it is not a thing of breaking the law or not. It's all about not getting my anxiety trough the roof to save money. If the price is marked down, I'd be scared that my doll would get lost and then I'd have lost even more money than just the custom fee.

 

In Australia there's no charge if the items are worth less than $1000, so I've never had to pay a processing fee. The fees in Europe sound brutal. D:

 

When I'm dealing with American sellers, not just for doll items, I often ask them to please mark the amount I paid as the value, because sometimes people will *overvalue* things for insurance purposes, and it's a hassle getting the taxes back - I once had something I paid $100 for listed at $300 on the customs form, for example.

I don't know how it works sending stuff out of Canada, I haven't had any people I've sent things to tell me what happened with customs fees, but through Canada Post, I buy insurance in increments of $100, it's separate from the declared value, and I don't think it's listed on the package. Haven't had anything lost, though, and the last item I declared at about $105 and insured for $200 was a return to a company anyhow, so it shouldn't have been hit at all.

Things coming from places outside the US, regardless of declared value, if they come through Canada Post, seem far less likely to get hit than things coming from the states. This may be because the people working at Customs can't handle currency conversion more complicated than USD -> CAD. I have not tried getting a customs refund on something declared with a high value from Japan, for example, and saying "You converted from USD when it's supposed to be in yen!" - I would probably need a PayPal receipt saying it actually *was* yen to have any luck with that. Someday, I do expect some idiot at Customs to try and tax me on a few thousand yen as USD, though...that's gonna be ugly.

Even with things insured for proper value, I haven't had any luck with lost packages, even if the seller did get their money back and lied to me about it, because of PayPal's extremely short dispute times even though international things can take much longer to get there before you really start to worry, there wasn't anything I could do about it. And this is why I won't use bank account payments anymore. So I don't know how much luck you'd have with correctly valued items anyhow.