Shipping to India Procedure

Shipping to India Procedure -Most people reading this are wondering how difficult the process of shipping to india is.In most cases,shipping for various products is managed by the online seller.Im guessing the majority of us buy products from China websites,Ebay and Amazon.

Before making a purchase it would be useful to check up the customs duty rates in India,as this can increase your cost alot.Its a simple process to check the cutoms duty cost by referring to the HS code chart.If you are buying from Chinese/Taiwanese websites be sure to check for online scamsters so that you dont end up losing your money.

There are some questions that are confusing for people purchasing an item from Amazon or Ebay USA via USPS  shipping to india.

The most asked question is, if i purchase it as a gift and ask for it to be shipped what will happen?

There are many websites,especially aliexpress, that is a great bargain chinese site to buy electronics,computer and just about anything from.Most of these places say that they can “mark as gift” so that you wont be charged any customs duty.Let me explain this very easily.Most of computer/electronic related products are FREE of customs duty to begin with.What they ARE NOT free of is other duties like countervailing duty and other cess charges.You can see the breakup here.Only the BASIC DUTY gets nullified for these electronic/computer related items.

In a gift item,the website does not issue a commercial invoice in the packing list.Let me tell you that customs officials aren’t fools.For some small excuse or the other,they will detain your parcel and make you run around.Important thing to note is that,if there is no invoice,then the customs can mark any value to the parcel,known as accessible value.If you paid$100 on the website,without an invoice,there is no proof,and the assessed value could be taken as $150-200,anything.Just to save a few bucks,you will end up paying even more and having your parcel stuck .Here is an example below.

I imported 20 memory heat spreaders from a website for $1 each.Total bill came to $20.I thought there wouldn’t be customs duty as this was such a small parcel.So i asked not to put the invoice in the packing list.Guess what,i ended up paying close to rs.3000 in the form of “other duties” and shipping,more than the price of the goods($20 or rs.1000)