Hi there.

Our life in 20 boxes ship tomorrow for their 12 week journey. I know it is a bit late and my mrs. said it is her fault but it states that you must state anything that is less than 12 months old. Obviously a lot of things are neither or here but the oh says she has got some clothes with tags on (suprise suprise ). The trouble is the boxes ship tomorrow and we do not really want to go through them all.

My question is how hard are they on you for this if they find any? As I see it they are worried about people shipping in quantities of goods that could be re-sold and escape the duty.
Has anyone had any first hand experience of this as I do not want a fine, thanks James .

I think it highly unlikely they will be interested in clothes, unless they are very obviously commercial quantities (entire boxes of new t-shirts etc)

Buzzy

Thanks buzzy I think I will chance it, cheers James

I agree with Buzzy, clothes would need to be in commercial quantities to be of any interest. However other goods can be of interest. I brought a number of electronic goods with me that were over 12 months old but in good condition. Customs asked me to provide purchase receipts before they would release the goods with duty being payable.

I did declare a relatively new home PC and had to pay $78 before our consignment was released The box it was in however was unopened and they wouldn't have known otherwise

Hi Loch lomond and manwinoname.

I did not declare a Wii that was in there but that is well over 12 months old

Am I led to believe that if they open a box and find something that they believe to be less then 12 months old they can charge you for it wehter you declare it or not? wtf

Also what are they charging you the cash for? Is this handling e.t.c, cheers James

Watch out for your shoes! They charge $22 per pair to steam clean any they don't like the look of, be they old or new.

From my experience the onus is on you to prove to goods are over 12 months old, not the other way round. I guess at a pinch if you didn't have receipts you could prove age by model number, year of manufacture etc.
The charge is excise duty.

Its fair enough L L I will just have to see what happens. It is up the them what they do it does seem unfair though when the item (s) could be unboxed and clearly a persons personal items.

Hi Lesleys.

Thankfully we have not packed any shoes as we were aware of this. This rule makes me laugh as I can in theory walk through with my own cross country trainers in my bag covered in cowshit no problem, I have taken
dirty-ish shoes in before

My sound stupid but i'm going to ask anyway. Does the ruling apply to just stuff in your shipping or will it apply for things that you take in your suitcase too? I can understand TV's etc but i've got loads of clothes and shoes etc that are less than 12 months old

Hi Vickys.

As I understand it, it is only stuff you ship and not your hand luggage / suitcase items. I would not worry about these items in your suitcase

Thanks for that, i'll put all my old stuff in my suitcase and go on a shopping spree for new clothes and shoes before we go.

They aren't going to worry about clothes/shoes/cds all that kind of thing, unless you have boxloads of stuff and it looks like you plan to sell it on.
They will only worry about the stuff on which it is worth charging duty - large electrical stuff etc, and very few peopleon here have been charged.