AliExpress, Amazon customs duties and modalities?

[moonseeker]

I have a few  items I can order only via the 2 above, normally I am using Lazada. 

Any experience with customs, duties and delivery procedures for the these companies? Heard some stories, 

items had to be picked up at customs offices in BKK????  It will be some electronic meters and specialty stuff.

Cost abroad from 4'000 Baht up......If there are huge fees and complications, I might as well pay 2.5 x times and buy here 

in TH, also they don't have all the up-to-date items I need. Is there a percentage fee of the value? Thank you for sharing.  MS

[poanoi]

my experience is when the bill is 180 dollar plus, i get to pay a fee

when the postman comes, cant recall how much but perhaps around 500 baht.

everything i bought from aliexpress that costed less than 180 dollar i didnt pay any extra to the postman.

 

it took a tad less than 2 weeks to get it here

in all cases i think, make sure 'banglamung is included in shipping address if you live in pattaya, or the post has issues figuring out where you stay

 

if you buy shoes in asia online, make sure to order 3-4 larger size than the white man

define, my scandinavian size 10.5 turned out to be asian size 13

 

my experience with amazon is that they require a US address or you cant order

Edited July 8, 2018 by poanoi

[moonseeker]

20 minutes ago, poanoi said:

my experience is when the bill is 180 dollar plus, i get to pay a fee

when the postman comes, cant recall how much but perhaps around 500 baht.

everything i bought from aliexpress that costed less than 180 dollar i didnt pay any extra to the postman.

 

it took a tad less than 2 weeks to get it here

in all cases i think, make sure 'banglamung is included in shipping address if you live in pattaya, or the post has issues figuring out where you stay

 

if you buy shoes in asia online, make sure to order 3-4 larger size than the white man

define, my scandinavian size 10.5 turned out to be asian size 13

 

my experience with amazon is that they require a US address or you cant order

Thank you very much. Good point with shoes. Am 13 US. Thx. again. MS>

[Jeffrey346]

I have used Amazon many times. 2 months ago I ordered a Nvidia Shield TV Box. Cost including Global shipping was $249.00. The Global Shipping program takes care of any Customs and VAT charges. It was delivered in 7 days to my door via UPS/Kerry with no additional charges. About 3 weeks later I received a $10. refund to my CC as Amazon always estimates Customs and VAT on the high side.

3 weeks ago I ordered a Panasonic Wet/Dry Electric Razor. $139. Arrived in 5 days.

Waiting to see if a get any refund. I highly recommend Amazon to Thailand.

 

BTW.. the Amazon App has a new international section that will show all products that they will ship to Thailand.

[banglay]

According to iherb  website there is no Thai Import duties  to be paid on orders under $49 (US). I assume that is a standard rate and I use this as a general rule of thumb when ordering and have never been stung as of yet ?

[MikeN]

12 hours ago, poanoi said:

 

 

my experience with amazon is that they require a US address or you cant order

Amazon now have a mobile app, Android and IOS, for international buyers. Set your location and currency in the settings, and it shows everything that will ship to Thailand, in baht if you prefer. Supposedly including any customs fees too .....

[Jeffrey346]

26 minutes ago, MikeN said:

Amazon now have a mobile app, Android and IOS, for international buyers. Set your location and currency in the settings, and it shows everything that will ship to Thailand, in baht if you prefer. Supposedly including any customs fees too .....

If you use the Baht price, the item costs more as of today, Amazon uses 35 to the $$.

It's cheaper to use your CC.

Edited July 9, 2018 by Jeffrey346

[mike324]

Anything below $50 you won't have to pay tax, anything above, expect to pay tax and duties which adds up to around 400-500 baht (again depending what you are ordering and tax class it falls into).

 

Most stuff delivered from aliexpress, the sellers will under value the items for you, make sure they do it too by sending a note. If they ship by normal air post, it generally flies under the customs radar. If its by EMS, it has a high likelihood of being examine, if its by DHL/UPS don't even think about it.

 

Amazon is great that they will calculate the tax and pay it for you, refund you if their estimated tax was too high. Highly recommend Amazon if its not too much of a difference from aliexpress.

[1DegreeN]

If the total value of the shipment is less than 40,000 baht and it is sent by post (i.e. EMS), then you have to pay the standard VAT duty at the local postoffice. If the value is more than 40K then you have to go to the nearest Customs House and pay the duty there. For me that is a 2 hour drive away at Aranyaprathet and is something to be avoided. So far I've always been able to have the vendor deliver via EMS and last time asked them to send in two consignments so that each was under the 40K limit.

[moonseeker]

Super info all. Thank you so much. So, if I ordered also a higher end soundbar below 1200 US via Amazon, it might work out well. Thank you all. MS>

[grkt]

Why people here make their own rule ?

The only Thai customs rule is no tax for items under $20, not $50 or any amount of your dreams.

But most of the time your parcel won't be checked if it's small and not coming from Japan... But this is not a rule, it's just a fact everywhere in the world.

 

 

[Kerryd]

I order a lot of stuff through Amazon, Lazada and AliExpress (and some other sites).

 

Amazon is normally really good. They assess the Customs duties at time of purchase and if it comes out the duties are less than charged, they refund it to your credit card. They have never charged me more (after the fact) and only twice did I ever have to go to Customs and pay an additional fee. Once was because a minor functionary decided I must be ordering Wyler's Drink Mix Powder to resell (even after I explained to him why I was ordering it and showed him the 8 or 9 times I'd ordered the same thing over the past couple of years - without having to pay any extra duties).  (I hate drinking plain water and all the Ice Tea mixes are usually loaded with sugar and not a lot of variety in flavours.)

You do not need a US address to order through Amazon. I've never had a US address and I've ordered 10s of thousands of $ worth of stuff for delivery to Afghanistan (work related) and Thailand (personal stuff).

 

Lazada is more difficult to navigate than Amazon as their "tagging" system leaves a lot to be desired. However, ordering and having stuff delivered is pretty good. I've order little things that cost a couple hundred baht and had them delivered (usually by Kerry - no relation to me) within days.

I've ordered a fancy digital camera (which was coming from China) and it never arrived. Filed a cancellation when the delivery was a couple days overdue and my money was refunded within a couple of days. Ordered a different model of the same type of camera and it arrived (from China) within 10 days - no duties or tariffs.

 

AliExpress is also a bit of a nightmare to navigate. Even when you try and narrow down your search terms to specific details, you can still end up with 10s of thousands of items to try and scroll through, most of which don't fit any of your search terms !

Also - be VERY aware that most of AliExpress items come from China and they have a system where you only have "purchase protection" for 1 month after making the purchase. If the item doesn't arrive or is damaged or not what you ordered, you can raise a dispute if it is within the 1 month window. Otherwise you are out of luck.

A (Thai) friend of mine ordered a bunch of motorcycle parts for his shop because it was cheaper and quicker than ordering from the US. He was having problems figuring out how to do the orders and asked me to help. We got everything done and within 2 weeks stuff started arriving.

 

One item never arrived and he asked me to help him figure out why. The item was shipped from the shop to a mail processing facility in China, where it sat for a month and was then returned to the sender. No notification was sent to my friend, no reason given for why the item never shipped from China (it wasn't a restricted item, it was a side-license plate holder for a motorcycle). But because my friend waited for over a month before checking on it, he wasn't covered anymore and AliExpress considered the transaction completed. The seller got paid and got the item back !

 

AliExpress will also use one "order number" and send you notification that an item from that order was shipped - but the notification doesn't say which item was shipped. You have to go to the site, open the orders and scroll through them to try and figure out which item was shipped and which are still pending. A real PITA if you are ordering multiple items and making multiple orders.

I noticed as well that when my friend placed the initial order, it took a while before the payment was processed (he used PayPal) but in the meantime he was getting bombarded with emails from the individual sellers asking him what the problem was and they were waiting for payment before they could ship (etc, etc). A couple days later the payment when through and the emails stopped.

Note: I've ordered stuff that was shipped by Registered Mail and normally have never been hit with additional duties. I think 3 times in the last 4 years (out of maybe 25 or so total orders I've made online) I've had to go to the Post Office to collect a parcel and pay an additional fee.

But be wary of anything shipped by UPS (or even DHL). UPS seems (to me) to be the absolute worst when it comes to duties. Most of those courier companies use a Brokerage company to process the paperwork and they hit you with the maximum possible duties and tariffs as well as additional delivery fees.

I've paid (the equivalent of) $500.83 US for a shipment that was valued at $694.56 US (+$182.32 for shipping and insurance for a total of $876.88 US).

UPS changed the Freight Charge (on paper) to read 17,640 baht ($533 US when the actual cost was only $182.32).
They then added an additional insurance charge of 218 baht, even though the actual insurance cost was included in the $182.32 shipping charge).
They then total the cost of the items, the shipping cost and the insurance cost together (it came out to 39,659.77 baht).

They then taxed that amount at 30% !!! (11,897.77 baht)

They then add the total shipping cost and the Duties together (51,557.54 baht) and taxed that amount another 7% for VAT (3,609.04 baht) !
Then UPS added a 200 baht "Disbursement Fee" and taxed that at 7% VAT as well.

My total cost to get the shipment after it arrived in Thailand was 15,720.97 Baht (about $500.83 US) for a shipment that was valued at $876.88 US. Works out to about 57% additional fees.

(I didn't realize until just now that they'd screw me on the "Freight" charge. The Invoice the driver gave me listed the Duties and VAT charges, but didn't break them down. I was going through the rest of that paperwork just now as I was writing this and noticed they screwed me on the "Freight" charges. The actual charge should have been around 5,722.89. That would have brought the Duty down to 8,322.8 and then the VAT would have been 2,524.58 for a total of 10,847.38. A difference of 4,873.6 baht (or about $155 US) cheaper !)

                                      Invoice                                                                                                                         Actual Charges broken down

  

 

 

 

 

Edited July 9, 2018 by Kerryd

[Jeffrey346]

16 hours ago, poanoi said:

 

 

 

my experience with amazon is that they require a US address or you cant order

Nope, Thai address is fine.

[MikeN]

3 hours ago, Jeffrey346 said:

If you use the Baht price, the item costs more as of today, Amazon uses 35 to the $$.

It's cheaper to use your CC.

Well that varies from person to person, as not everybody has a credit card with a US bank account you know ! For me it's cheaper to pay in baht with my thai debit card than my AU credit card. (and I read something about Amazon redirecting traffic and forcing Australians to shop at the .au site if they use an Australian credit card or an Australian address at the international site, so I possibly would not be able to use it anyway)

[Jeffrey346]

1 minute ago, MikeN said:

Well that varies from person to person, as not everybody has a credit card with a US bank account you know ! For me it's cheaper to pay in baht with my thai debit card than my AU credit card. (and I read something about Amazon redirecting traffic and forcing Australians to shop at the .au site if they use an Australian credit card or an Australian address at the international site, so I possibly would not be able to use it anyway)

Good point. I always shop Amazon US and never thought about how they may handle other countries. 

[uwe_rayong]

1 hour ago, grkt said:

Why people here make their own rule ?

The only Thai customs rule is no tax for items under $20, not $50 or any amount of your dreams.

But most of the time your parcel won't be checked if it's small and not coming from Japan... But this is not a rule, it's just a fact everywhere in the world.

 

 

 

 

Why would a Country like Thailand set a duty free allowance in USD ? And why should it be exactly 20 USD?  Are you from the US?

Anyway, most items sent via POST are duty free if the value is below 1500.- THB

 

 

http://en.customs.go.th/IMPORTING POSTAL ITEMS

 

 

If FOB is between 1500-40000 THB taxes and duties are applied. 

 

 

 

 

[kimchibob]

One thing you have to watch out for when ordering from Amazon and shipping to Thailand is that sometimes the voltage specification for items in their catalog is 110. This is especially true for small appliances. Check before ordering!

[HerbalEd]

11 hours ago, grkt said:

Why people here make their own rule ?

The only Thai customs rule is no tax for items under $20, not $50 or any amount of your dreams.

But most of the time your parcel won't be checked if it's small and not coming from Japan... But this is not a rule, it's just a fact everywhere in the world.

 

 

Where is that "rule" published?

[guzzi850m2]

I just got 100$ back from Amazon on a 700 $ laptop in too much paid import taxes.
Same thing happened last year on a tablet bought from them, tax refunded 1-2 months later.
Using a Bangkok bank visa card, no problems.
Sure some items don't ship to Thailand but most do if you look hard enough.

Sent from my SM-C710F using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[vinegarbase]

According to Thai customs anything over 1500 baht you might get hit with duty, the percentage is usually around 20% and can even go up to much higher but it really depends on what the item is and how the customs officer classifies it. You can try to undervalue the package as much as you can to a reasonable extent but you still will risk the customs officer deciding what the package value really is. 

 

I have dealt with this a million times, beware the value of the contents of your package exceeding 1500 baht!

Edited July 10, 2018 by vinegarbase

[moonseeker]

Thank you for that Super! detailed info and everyone else who contributed. Very informative and helpful to many of us. Much appreciated. TV members often make that difference for us. MS>