Postal System In Thailand

[Viper]

Hi all,

Ive just recently had a very bad experience with bringing personal goods into Thailand. I had alot of personal belongings to bring with me from UK so I decided to post one box at 14.7kg from my local post office that cost me a hugh 135 GBP which included insurance up to 500 GBP. I carried 2 bags to the airport and checked in at the counter to weigh my bags that were a mere 17kg over weight. The attendant then instructed me to pay 600 GBP for the excess weight. My flight ticket cost 300 GBP so i was never the less very upset with this news. EVA were not very understanding at all, and in the end i found a company that deal with excess bags and it cost me 160 GBP to send.

I arrived in BKK, and my extra bag arrived 10 days later. I was instructed to go to Suvumabumi cargo dept. Where i was greeted and taken to an office. I gave them my details and they instructed me to pay a further 5´000baht. I told them that was disgraceful and insisted that i should collect the bag from customs myself and not use there service. They then said that i cant do that but dropped there price to 2´500baht. I said its still to much and in the end got them down to 1´800baht. Which was still alot but i had already been there 4 hrs and really wanted to go home.

A further 4-5 days past and my parcel arrived. It was in my girlfriends name and she was instructed to go to the main post office to collect it. We sent a driver with all the details and when he got there they asked for 10´000baht as they said they wanted 20% the value of the goods. In fact the goods are valued at less the 200GBP and the insurance was for 500 GBP in case the package got lots (which in fact is what i was hopping as they usually do). I payed good money in UK for a door to door sevice with parcel force. I do not understand the postal service here in Thailand. Does any one know the correct procedure here? Im pretty fed up with it all as all together it has cost me alot of time and money, and i really dont think i will ever use the postal system again. Perhaps there is a better way? I dont know, but this was my experience. Im still waiting for 2 more parcels to arrive. They are second hand model airoplanes, for person use. Im not looking forward to all the hassle all over again

[Crossy]

It's not the postal service you should blame, it's Thai Customs.

Whenever a package or freight arrives in the country (actually even in the UK) it is assessed for value and if any duty or tax is payable on it.

Unfortunately, Thai customs use the declared (insured) value to decide how much the contents is worth. There is an international classification system but if they don't know what it is, or if your stuff doesn't fit into one of the easy categories they'll just decide on 20% duty.

You'll have the same problem no matter how you get your stuff here, except, maybe carrying it in your baggage.

On a brighter note, you may find that the other packages get through with no duty payable, luck of the draw I'm afraid.

As to being hit for excess baggage, why didn't you weigh your stuff first (bathroom scales are fine)? The airlines use some weird formula for working out how much you need to pay, but it involves the cost of a full-price ticket. 35 quid a kilo to BKK is fairly normal although it certainly used to be unusual to get stung for every k overweight, I've flown in the past with 20k over and only paid for 10.

Maybe a Business Class upgrade would have been cheaper.

Sorry, hindsight is always 20:20, you'll know better next time.

[ProThaiExpat]

I have received many things by parcel post through the Thai postal system, even things that started in China through China Post.

My experience is that there is a unit of customs that has responsibility for parcels mailed to Thailand and my last information is that duty need be paid when the value of the goods exceeds 2500 Baht. Variable I am sure.

Usually I receive a notice of a parcel to be picked up at the post office, same as in western countries and at the recovery window is a log book with my parcel and the amount customs has assessed on the parcel.

I don't believe the post office has anything to do with assessing the duty.

I once was noticed to appear at the customs office at the airport to provide information as to the value of the contents of a parcel that the shipper had failed to indicate the value. They acceipted by valuation without question. Package was quite small.

Excess baggage and items shipped by air require pick up through customs, usually at the aircarriers cargo depot. By sea the same.

There are few who don't have stories regarding the corruption in the customs department. Regular shippers use shipping agents who have reached an accomodation with customs.

I have been told that Fedex pays duty on a pro-rata basis based on the number of packages so even though you are shipping documents with no intrinsic value, Fedex will assess a fee in many cases.

Your experience doesn't seem unusual to me.

[lotus eater]

Shipping one's books to Thailand when setting up house here must be pretty common. Was wondering how people assessed the value of the books for the customs declaration? Surely not replacement value - far too cumbersome to find out & most will be out of print.