We’re working on a new initiative to help lower international shipping costs and make U.S. deliveries smoother for both you and your customers. One of the biggest goals is to give buyers the option to pre-pay duties and taxes at checkout so no one gets hit with surprise fees when their package arrives.
To make sure we’re building something that actually helps, we’d love to hear from our international shops:
What are your biggest pain points when shipping to the U.S.?
Have you had any issues with customs, duties, or shipping delays?
What carriers or services are you currently using?
Would it help if Spicerack could negotiate discounted rates or handle duty collection automatically?
Your feedback will directly shape how we design this solution.
Please share your experiences and thoughts below!
Yes, indeed, we had to suspend sales to USA because of this f*** trump tariffs. I mean, 39% on products from Switzerland? Sorry….??? And we as sellers shall pay this in advance….? C’mon, that’s a bad joke
And to make it even a bit more crazy, this “prepayment” is only required and possible on orders below US$ 800 (the former de minimis exception value). Above this value, we must NOT prepay the US tariffs, but the customer will have a bad surprise when the bill from the shipping agent drops in (or when the postman asks for money when handing over the package).
The only solution (which does not help for orders above US$ 800) is to have separate prices for US buyers (where the US tariffs will already be part of the price). That’s how Etsy implemented it now.
It’s not waterproof and one have to be careful with the invoice (to split the total value of the invoice to the customer by product price, US tariffs and shipping).
But it’s the only possible solution we see at the moment, although an automatically addition of US duties to US orders by Spicerak would be the luxury solution. But we don’t think that it can implemented so easy because the tariffs might be depending on either the country of origin of a product or the country from which the shipping is done (we do not know exactly).
We do usually ship with Swiss Post, where USPS is their partner in US. Problems? Interestingly only with expensive FedEx, but mostly not with USPS.
These definitely are some challenging tariff times but we’re looking to provide some meaningful assistance for our shops.
I think you maybe mistaken about prepayment of tariffs (DDP) only available for shipments under $800 value - from all that I am seeing, the $800 value is just being mentioned because up until now the U.S. didn’t tax on shipments valued under $800 but DDP should be an option regardless of what the value is.
We are looking at a few different ways to help and have some meetings scheduled with freight consolidators & forwarders in the EU and UK where theoretically, Spicerack could charge tariffs on orders from shops based on their location, order value & commodity of the items ordered whereby the shop would ship their orders to one of the EU forwarders who would then consolidate the pieces and charge us the DDP cost which we have already collected from the customers and then ship the orders in bulk to our warehouse in the U.S. for us to repackage individually and ship to the individual customers. The consolidation would reduce your overall shipping costs and would only add a few days of transit depending on the frequency we have the consolidated shipments shipped to us.
We’re working on these details and look forward to as much feedback as we can get from our international shops!
no, and that’s what makes us angry. Nobody understands this currrent chaos in US - so how can we expect that our customers will understand?
The thing with the 800 limit seems to be that USPS already has processes and tools in place to collect the tariffs from the recipient from the time before the fall of the de minimis.
So they still use this existing tools to collect the US tariffs, but as it was in the past only for orders above the former limit of US$ 800.
I know, it sounds ridiculous, but that’s how it currently works (see the attached instructions from the Swiss Post).
Hmmm, but in our possible method - you’ll just be shipping to an EU location and we’ll use DDP Fedex to ship everything to us in the U.S. to separate and ship domestically.
Nice idea, but will not work in our case because Switzerland is not in the EU.
Thanks to a free trade agreement, there is no customs/tariff on shipments from Switzerland to EU. But what ever is shipped to the EU will get between 19% to 27% VAT (depending on the EU country) charged to the recipient (the EU location).
Just a last thought, not from our point of view here in Switzerland, but if you plan to implement this for sellers in the EU.
Everything shipped within the EU will contain between 19% to 27% VAT (depending on the EU country). Only if something is shipped to OUTSIDE the EU, the price can be without this EU VAT.
So with other words, for this scenario, the EU location warehouse must have some status as “tax free zone” or something (no idea, if this exists at all) to enable the sellers to ship it to this warehouse without EU VAT, otherwise finally the US customer pays EU VAT and the products will be way to expensive.
We’re somewhat baffled that non-US producers are looking for ways to pre-pay US tariffs on products. This is a US problem, and like everywhere in the rest of the world, dealing with tariffs and import taxes is the customer’s obligation. We’re very much looking for ways to ship to the US in such a way that the buerocarcy and the bloodletting is done on the customer’s side, just like it is with the rest of the world. We’re neither prepared nor willing to shoulder the risk of volatile US tariff policy or dubious handling fees that might be imposed on us after the fact.
Concerning the idea of a EU forwarder and spicerack handling the buerocracy? Nice, in principle, if it weren’t for the thing Peppery has already mentioned. At least over here in germany, the tax authority demands 19% VAT on all sales that we make of which we can’t prove that they have been exported outside the EU. With a shipping destination address within the EU this is impossible. This forwarding scheme would only work if the target address is outside the EU, and the operator has some kind of deal with the customs office in the destination country that requires no import fees to be paid for shipments from the EU.
Of course tariffs should be imposed on the customer side it’s just a question of getting them to pay upfront instead of being surprised when the item arrives.
I wasn’t aware of the VAT issue without exporting proof.. that does make it more difficult…
I know in the US if someone overseas is purchasing form the US to ship to them back in their country there are some locations that are tax/duties exempt because it is known that they are an exporter.. let me check with the consolidators we’re talking with to find out if that exists in the EU..
To be fair, EU customers get the same ‘surprise’ when purchasing things from the US. If you’re looking to set things up in one direction, it’d make sense to have the same setup in the other direction (if possible). Otherwise… well, it’s just how things currently work in the rest of the world. America isn’t particularly special, and we’re not sure why folks should seek to give US customers special treatment when you could give the same options to non-US customers.
Of course! We’re still trying to get all the facts about these new tariffs because I think a lot of us (us included!) are sketchy on all the intricate the details..
