Sending clothes to USA

lightspeed

Hi can anybody here advise of what i need to do to send a parcel with various clothing items to USA?

I have already paid the courier (parcel2go) but although they have live chat agents to assist, they dont seem to able to advise much regarding US custom requirements or know much about what they need from their end.

I had originally put the value at €100 as €50.00 was insured and for an extra €2.50, i could ensure in excess of this amount so i just left the value at €100 until i read that only gift items of $100 or less are exempt from custom tax.

I then got the agent i was chatting with to change the value to €60.00. The first page of the invoice still has he value as €100 but this seems only to be going to the UK GLS sorting branch in Berkshire. The other 3 commercial invoices have €60.00 which is fine.

However, the agent when i was filling out the details advised me to just put quantity as "1" and under description as "clothes". Will this be enough for US customs?

There are various wool and cotton items. Mostly a woollen jumper, cotton pyjamas, leather gloves and some very small hand knitted items. The box is reasonably large though, about 61 cm in length, 24 cm in width and just over 4kg in weight.

It is being picked up on Monday. Can anybody confirm if i need to include a more detailed description than "clothes" and does it matter that i have quantity as "1". If any border/custom agent opened the box, they would see that it is only a small number of clothes so should not be any cause for alarm or suspicion of anything else.

delahuntv

Don't worry - for small gift items a general explanation to contents is mre than sufficient.

1 x Clothes is quite correct too as its to do with product classification rater than need to know each individual item.

Also - it may have worked out cheaper by vacuum packing them into 2 smaller boxes and sending by An Post?

2kg in shoe box size box = €17.80 (total €35.60)

or single box parcel by an post = €50.50 (5-7day delivery)

lightspeed

Thanks i really appreciate the help. I had not really thought of the vac packing idea but it is a good idea. The biggest item is probably a large woollen jumper but I may have been able to compress using the vac pack bags as you mentioned.

Just so I know for future, does the dimensions of the parcel affect the price as well as weight?

For An Post, i had not filled out any calculator to include the dimensions of the box but I briefly checked their prices and Zone 3 rest of the world, 4 kg parcel costs €120 to ship.

Parcel2go seems to be comparison website and gave the cheapest at €60.00. I think it said that was the price for up to 50 kg and that it was being shipped by GLS couriers, 3 day delivery. Other quotes were considerably higher and as high as €169.00.

L1011

I'd be careful about vacuum packing if the outer boxes aren't quite strong - those bags can expand over time due to leakage and could easily burst a light box or paper wrapping.