guys i have a lens in the states that was supposed to be handcarried by a friend but the dealer sent it to the wrong adress thus missing an oppurtunity to be handcarriend to the Philippines for free. anyway i am an acct holder with dhl and wanted to know if this item will be heavily taxed?

to be specific its a nikon 17-55 lens bought used from a friend. so its not brand new, all the receipts are in the box. should i go through with this or just wait for a mule to lug it home for me? have very bad experience with the way our local customs evaluators/appraisers tax incoming shipments.

guys i have a lens in the states that was supposed to be handcarried by a friend but the dealer sent it to the wrong adress thus missing an oppurtunity to be handcarriend to the Philippines for free. anyway i am an acct holder with dhl and wanted to know if this item will be heavily taxed?

to be specific its a nikon 17-55 lens bought used from a friend. so its not brand new, all the receipts are in the box. should i go through with this or just wait for a mule to lug it home for me? have very bad experience with the way our local customs evaluators/appraisers tax incoming shipments.

Wait for a mule Carlo. :) It will save yah alot of bread...

Just Adding: All the Tax stuff and customs duties, as well as miscellaneous fees etc. start when you hit above the 100 USD mark, complications arise when the value hits somewhere around 10K Php, that's when you'll expect a call from your broker/courier if you want to proceed with this coz of the payables... Below this you don't need to pay the courier or customs anything... If it's second hand as you say, maybe there are exceptions, but do not count your chickens yet coz, they really do open, check and appraise there. If the box is sealed, it's either they open it thoroughly or poke a hole in it to view the contents with a video camera... But since you are shipping-in a lens, these items are already marked as expensive... There's no way to get around the taxing system for it not unless you know someone there inside customs.

i'd suggest you wait.

last time i had something shipped, i paid for the item, the shipping, the customs tax AND 12% vat!

You're a marked man if you ship it with DHL or Fedex or TNT or whatever other branded courier you want to use. For example, the people of Datacolor, the company that makes the Spyder and Print Fix Pro sent me a sample of their Print Fix Pro Suite from their HK office. Now I told them to value the products as DEMO with NO COMMERCIAL VALUE which they did. They listed a token $20 for insurance purposes on their company invoice.

I shipped this via TNT because we have a corporate account. So I get the bill the other day and for a $20 declared item, I am being asked to pay P 5,000 including freight. What? From HK? Yup. I smell a conspiracy with customs and these couriers. Customs taxes you on their perceived value, plus other stuff like doc stamps, etc, and then they even tax you on the freight charges. Once you get taxed by customs, the courier then charges you brokerage fees. TNT charged me P1,000 brokers fee, P 1,000 for freight, and customs nailed me for P 3,000. P 5,000 for an item valued at $20 on official Invoice from a very reputable Digital company. A conspiracy I say.

you'll be better off having it shipped via EMS and pick it up in your local post office within 5 days. It's as safe and fast as couriers and you can haggle and sweet talk the customs. :D

I might as well share with you another alternative but legitimate way of sending products to the Philippines. Have you ever tried shipping anything through EMS? It stands for Express Mail Service and is like a service offered by post offices around the world. The EMS office of the Philippines is on the way to the airport.

Now I've never sent anything such as a lens through EMS. But in all my experience, my parcels were only opened in front of my face. Now I can say that the people over at EMS are probably the most greedy and corrupt people you could ever meet. But you can use that to your advantage. They pull the usual song and dance number at the start, open the books, assess high, etc so that you approach them to negotiate. And negotiating is what they like to do. The hassle is that you have to go there. The good thing is that since they are so stinking greedy, you end up paying less than you would sending through any courier. With the courier you can't negotiate with the customs officer, with EMS you can.

Ha Dex, you beat me to the post!

try USPS (United States Postal Service), Carlo. They have a tracking website to know where your goods are i.e. in transit or in the airport. I bought two (2) regulators from Leisurepro and I just had them shipped here (door to door). No tax, no damage.

ps - they have a website http://www.usps.com/

pps - of course you'll lose some sleep until the goods arrive...;)

Have you tried Jhonny Air? They're fast and cheap. Had $3k worth of products shipped in and I was only charged the freight equivalent. They have several receiving centers in the U.S.

Personally, I don't mind paying taxes as long as it is transparent. The problem is their "blue book" is not distributed publicly, hence, you do not really know what your are paying. And this is how they rob you blind!

hi nick, most of our photog equip here in davao (in my group) were from the us and shipped through EMS. Items I'Ve received so far in EMS include E-300 and E-500 kits, E-1 body, 14-54mm lens, D50 kit, Nikkor 24-120VR and more. On both the E-1 and E-500 I paid taxes (with P35.00 receipts) while the others only P35.00. It depends on the customs officer on duty at pick up. :D

and johnny air is okay too!

ay nick -- haha! peach bro!:Grin:

Johhny Air is a good option. I've been regularly having items shipped through them and no problem.
They charge roughly $6.50 per pound or volume weight, which ever is larger
Volume weight is calculated WxHxL (inches) divided by 166

The only problem I had was with an order I placed from B&H wherein the folks at B&H shipped it to the Johnny Air Cargo office in New York in a huge box. As in the box was so huge that my shipping bill reached over P6,000 due to volume weight. The actual item was only 3 pounds. So watch out that the box isn't unneccesarily large.

If the items are small, its can be really cost effective. For example, at the time when San Disk 1 Gig Ultra II were being sold locally for P8,000-9,000, I was able to order the said item from Amazon to be shipped to Johnny Air Cargo in New York. The cost of the CF card at Amazon was $94, and the charge of Johnny Air to ship to the Philippines was roughly P500. I saved at least P2,500.

I've also had some larger stuff sent without any problems.

You're a marked man if you ship it with DHL or Fedex or TNT or whatever other branded courier you want to use. For example, the people of Datacolor, the company that makes the Spyder and Print Fix Pro sent me a sample of their Print Fix Pro Suite from their HK office. Now I told them to value the products as DEMO with NO COMMERCIAL VALUE which they did. They listed a token $20 for insurance purposes on their company invoice.

I shipped this via TNT because we have a corporate account. So I get the bill the other day and for a $20 declared item, I am being asked to pay P 5,000 including freight. What? From HK? Yup. I smell a conspiracy with customs and these couriers. Customs taxes you on their perceived value, plus other stuff like doc stamps, etc, and then they even tax you on the freight charges. Once you get taxed by customs, the courier then charges you brokerage fees. TNT charged me P1,000 brokers fee, P 1,000 for freight, and customs nailed me for P 3,000. P 5,000 for an item valued at $20 on official Invoice from a very reputable Digital company. A conspiracy I say.

I suspect the same thing. I have had 2 experiences with such. I once ordered an item worth P26,000 and had it shipped through a courier. The courier's office here called me and said that customs was charging P13,000 tax - making my bill balloon to P39,000.00. Imagine that, 50% the value. I questioned this with the courier and advised me to talk with the customs person to settle it. I suspected that he was probably going to lower the customs tax if I would pay him some amount. I refused. I was so upset but at that time not willing to fight (my fault) that I just paid the tax thinking it was better that it went to the government rather than this crook. It was only after that I found out I should have been taxed only aroung 10 percent.

I had another experience that screamed conspiracy. It was with DHL, it was a small shipment of books. I often order books and used to have it shipped door to door (prior to discovering Johnny Air) and had never been taxed. Books are exempt from customs tax. Anyway, a few years ago my shipment of books was being taxed around P2000. I called and complained with DHL. I said they know very well that books are tax exempt and that they should have pointed it out and contested it with customs. They sort of apologized and said anyway, I could file some sort of papers to contest the customs charge and they would process everything for me. It was annoying enough that I had to be bothered with all these paper works. But I was soon outraged when I found out that there were all sorts of processing fees, and charges to overturn the unlawful customs charge - and the amount of all these fees was about P2000 also. So no matter what happened, I had to fork out the P2000 - as tax or as all sorts of processing fees to overturn the tax. I fought back the usual way, I posted the whole story in some forums. It reached some executive at DHL, they emailed me and said they would fix the problem. They never did and I never heard from them again. I just paid the unlawful tax and just avoided dealing with that courier again.

Ditto sir louie...johnny air is the way to go! :) i usually have my stuff (from B&H) delivered to their L.A. office para walang NY state tax...they only charge for the freight services, no outrageous taxes or whatsoever...even ordered a set of lights that came in a big big box, still i saved bread compared to purchasing it here in the PH...

@randall
Is it true that you have to have an account with Johnny Air to avail of such services?..

Sometimes its a case to case basis and we can see how the new revenue targets give way to more corruption...

Have an experience with my inlaws sending shoes thru Deutsche Post to my children because they are their inaanaks. It was declared as gifts and they paid the corresponding duties in Germany. It was still held by the Customs in the Post Office in Las Pinas and they were demanding taxes much higher than the value of the shoes..after haggling and calling for help from friends they were able to lower the taxes..

In another case..my friend in the US bought me a battery for my dell Axum X5 thru ebay..She purchased it thru a Hongkong ebayer and they declared it as a "gift". The battery arrived thru Fedex with no hassle no taxes..

With these kind of experiences, it really isnt a surprise why many of our countrymen want to get out of the phlippines..

@randall
@nick
How do i order from Amazon and have it delivered to Johnny Air in NY? I want to buy an AC Adapter for my powerbook and their price is a lot cheaper than here in Manila..
Would really appreciate it..thanks

i always rely on UPS as my courier when order something from B&H, they do really takes care of your shipment. though they charge more higher than other courier but i can sleep at night without worrying about my purchases. the only thing i hate are the importation tax+VAT. urgghhh!


here in saudi arabia...i have a friend that works with the US ARMY(civilian personnel) he uses an APO address which shipping fees and taxes are not applicable. hehehe. i sometimes use his address.

i use johnny air NY for stuff from ebay. it saves you a lot. just go to a johnny air cargo office and they will explain to you the details of this service.

@mario
you don't have to...they just require you to fill out a form before each on-line purchase so they can notify their office in NY or LA...i have purchased thru adorama and B&H many times na and had all of em delivered to their L.A. address, so far, wala pa naman irregularity in taxes na nangyari...Mr. joel of Johnny air said that they would only start charging taxes kung Php50k up yung worth ng purchase mo...

i haven't tried with amazon yet...but in B&H & adorama, i just use their LA address as the delivery addy...

im familiar with ems. a lens would probably cost $70 minimum fro us to phil in freight charges alone. im considering johnny air cargo, just wondering if packages still have to get screened by local customs upon arrival in the country?

Carlo,

Johnny Air is a good service but they aren't immune to customs checks. I've had two deliveries opened by customs shipping through them. Fortunately the items were not of any real value in their eyes to bother hitting me with taxes.

il likely wait, if not il go through ems instead, i have gotten through the examiners there and they are much easier to deal with as the packages are opened in front of you and you can haggle with them on the spot.

as for ems, do they have an international website? ive tried googling nothing came up. thanks

Where is this Johny Air Cargo office? Thanks!

i use johnny air NY for stuff from ebay. it saves you a lot. just go to a johnny air cargo office and they will explain to you the details of this service.

Where is this Johny Air Cargo office? Thanks!

CJV Bldg. 108 Aguirre St., Legaspi Village, Makati


http://www.johnnyair.com/images/phone.gif (632) 817 2854 / 817 0781
http://www.johnnyair.com/images/faxicon.gif (632) 810 7714
jac-mnl@johnnyair.com (jac-mnl@johnnyair.com)

Lower Ground Floor Bldg. A, Basement Amusement Center
SM Megamall, EDSA Mandaluyong City

http://www.johnnyair.com/images/phone.gif (632) 631 7101
638 8512 / 910 6907


for the full website link : http://www.johnnyair.com/location.htm
HTH:Grin:

meaning, if i'm going to buy thru Adorama, i will have them send it to Johnny Air in their CA address? Then Johnny Air will deliver to the address i indicated? Thanks!

I suggest Benedict. Do any of you know him?