So i have been shipping to US,New zealand,Australia,France,Canada,Uk,Portugal with flexipacks without including any invoices. Items weight ranged from 20 g to 1.5 kg max and value were always declared lower than the actual amount under the cn22/cn23 form on the flexipack flyer, not once i had a customer tell me that their item is held by custom.

however lately i had a customer purchased from Germany on July, item weighted around 300 grams,a month later the customer told me that it was held by custom and currently on its way back to me cause the letter that she received regarding the hold up was late delivered to her. The reason of the held up was the absence of the invoice outside the parcel. So i told her that now i have to wait to receive the item and charge another shipping fee of usd 9 from her to re ship it and then i would print that shipping fee as invoice to be included in the parcel to avoid any possibility of tax.

My questions are, where should i put the invoice? transaction paid via paypal so i just print the paypal invoice and paste it somewhere outside the flyer? do i just paste to cover the cn form on the flexipack 500g flyer? or do i put inside the flyer together with the item meaning the custom will have to open it up?

Looks like the custom in Germany is way stricter than the other countries..

Do I read this correctly, you are the supplier and you have sold this part to a person in Germany. The part is held in customers but it's going to be returned because you don't have an external invoice (but it really means customs do not have a copy of your invoice). When it's returned you will repack the part with the external invoice and ship again? For this you will charge the customer a further shipping amount?

If that's correct that's bit rough, if you open the door to say you can ship to Germany, door to door, then it's not the customers responsibility that you pack it correctly or do the paperwork correctly.

With the invoice, you can send a copy of the invoice to the shipping agent (or courier) and they will submit it to customs. You could also literally stick it to the side of the package too but with the stuff I send via DHL I just give them the paperwork and they sort it out. If there is a customs duty that needs to be applied then the courier will collect it upon delivery.

That's how I send stuff to Australia, I imagine it's not dissimilar to Germany.

This post has been edited by Kwallace: Aug 14 2018, 06:43 AM

Is it possible the CN22 was missed out by accident?

As on postal shipping a CN22 should be a sufficient replacement to a commercial invoice.

And I echo the last poster - not really fair to charge the customer to re-ship the item if they’re not at fault.

German customs is quite strict compared to UK for example.

Thanks guys for your insights, actually another reason for having the customer to pay for another shipping fee is to use the shipping price as the actual price of the item as value for the invoice as the real value is close to rm300,considering the value, it may get held up by the custom and charging the customer a further tax charge to retrieve it. Although im not familiar with germany custom tax, but you do have a point, i should make this an exception and pay the shipping fee myself. I will see how once the parcel is returned. I have been shipping overseas without including any invoice and had face zero issue with it probably cause of the low budget courier that i use.

One thing was odd that when i tracked this parcel, it actually reached Germany as in DHL Packet even though it was just flexipack from pos malaysia,so maybe that has to do with the custom expecting for a commercial invoice having to do with DHL.

That’s normal in Germany. DHL is owned by Deutsche Post - if you send the other way around by DHL Paket it’ll arrive in Malaysia by PosLaju

DHL Express the courier is different