Boycott Germany

German customs remains the sole customs authority world-wide that has given me any trouble. They’ve rejected more than one package for incorrect and/or ridiculous reasons and now - so far as I can determine - they’ve just absconded with my latest shipment. I’ve had less trouble shipping products to Nigeria, believe it or not.

I’ve had no other trouble with shipping anywhere else in the EU, and you’d think that EU entry anywhere would be consistent, but no.

So I have decided to simply never sell or ship to Germany ever again.

This is not a slight against the German people. If someone in Germany wants to buy something and have it shipped to some other EU address for forwarding, that’s fine with me. As long as it goes through customs somewhere else.

I sympathise. German Customs are the worst in the world, they are 95% of my shipping trouble.

Being from Germany I’m also quite frustrated atm. North american countries won’t take any shipments with trading goods trough the postal service anymore.I had to stop shipping there. Eu works still fine though so it’s probably a matter of perspective

This was all well before the pandemic. This is an issue of ridiculously overzealous customs enforcement, and it’s been an issue with Germany more than any other country in the world for years.

Ohh don’t forget Russia. If you go with local shippers you’re fine at customs and they can pick the order up at the post office. But if you try UPS or DHL you’re in bad luck! We’ve had packages rejected and sometimes the customer had to travel to moscow to pick it up at the airport.

Maybe it’s worth it to try and ship with another courier? I know customs=customs. But it seems ‘normal post’ customs are more relaxed in letting packages through. It also helped us a LOT to change the tariff/HS codes(US codes can differ from EU codes for some reason).

You can always exclude an individual country from your shipping method

That’s what I’ve done. I was just sharing with folks that I’ve been forced to do so.

Do you mean the packages will get rejected before they even arrive the customer?

I’ve bought filament sensors from Malta… I barely ever buy stuff from outside of Germany. Now I’m concerned. concerned

So often buying stuff from the Chinese, Aliexpress and everything arrives w/o any problem in Germany. OK, these items in general are below 20 EUR and are shipped with regular postal servicee. For such stuff there will be no problem

I ship plenty to Germany no problem at all both postal service or DHL. It fact most of my shipments to EU are for Germany. Don’t don’t know why you have so much trouble. Could it be how you declare the merchandize. Make sure you have the correct HS code and country of origin.

I send things the exact way to other countries and have never had anything returned other than from Germany. If they have extra requirements that other countries don’t then frankly they are not worth the bother.

I have quite a few customers in Germany and have had very few problems. Do you put the correct information on the front of the package in the customs form?

Yes. Exactly the same way I do to every other country on Earth. Germany is the only one that has ever rejected any of them, and they reject so many that I have been forced to take this action.

It’s very odd Nick. Although I did go through a spell where stuff was being returned in Miami from an international shipping hub. I started relabelling the contents as physically what they were rather than the use. So electronic music components became printed circuit boards. I also changed the HS code. Then I had no problems.

I send my PCBs with HSCODE 85340011. No problems with Germany.