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Old 05-01-07 | 07:35 PM
  #32  
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santiago
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Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 4,510
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From: Montréal, QC, Canada

Bikes: 2005 Kona Blast; 2005 Turner Flux, 2006 Felt F3C

Originally Posted by tuneman6212
I realize that now. I'm going to set up a PayPal account tomorrow night. I didn't know that you HAD to buy something 100% if you won the bid. I thought there were rare circumstances where you can back out. I guess I was only thinking about reserving the bike at that price rather than the total price with tax and duty. I appologize to everyone. Santiago.. how can I avoid brokerage fees?? As well there is $0 duty on the bike?
I've got bad news for you. It's bicycle frames that are duty free and not bikes.

If you look at the following tariff schedule, look at 87.12.00.00 you will see that bikes with a country of origin for each of the following Tariff Treatments, there is a different duty rate.
- CCCT, LDCT, UST, MT, MUST, CIAT, CT: 13%
- CRT: Free (0%)
- GPT: 8%

Forget about CRT. The bike would have had to have been made in Costa Rica.
The Scott is very likely made in Taiwan, which means it does not qualify for GPT. That leaves a 13% duty rate.

At one point there was Anti-Dumping that applied to lower priced bikes, that's what my original post alluded to. I can't find any references to bike anti-dumping so that may have been rescinded. In any case, that only applied to lower priced bikes.

With respect to brokerage fees you will need to do the following:
- You have to be close to an import point. In Montreal I use the customs office at Trudeau airport.
- Once you have a tracking number call UPS and ask them if brokerage fees are included with the shipment. There is an outside chance that the vendor ships it using one of UPS' all-inclusive shipping methods. If that's the case, there's nothing for you to do.
- If the UPS shipment does not include customs clearance then tell them that you do NOT authorize them to clear customs for you and that you will do it yourself.
- Keep an eye on the tracking information and when you see that the goods have arrived at the UPS depot, call UPS to find out if the papers to clear customs are ready. Keep calling back until they are. This will take about a day or so.
- Once the papers are ready, go to the UPS depot to pick up these papers.
- Drive over to the Customs Clearance office. The UPS depot here in Montreal even hands out little maps to show people how to get there.
- At the Customs Clearance office hand your papers over to the customs officer and they will process it. You will then have to pay any duties/taxes owed. They will then stamp your paperwork and you can head back to UPS.
- Hand over the stamped paper and walk away with your goods.

Now here's the funny thing about the Ebay vendor you won from. i won a Fox fork from them but when the package arrived, the sticker was filled in by the vendor as "Used Camera Equipment". You see, they also sell a lot of camera equipment and i think they got confused in the warehouse. I even told the customs officer that it was bike parts and not camera equipment but he didn't seem to care. In my case there were no duties to be paid.

Good luck with this.
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