[folkertino]

I can't believe it.

The other day I placed an order at CheckOutmyCards at a total cost of around 460 dollars. I have done orders before, all of which were of lesser value and never had any trouble. This time it has been withheld by customs.

I received a customs notification on Monday 22nd August and had to send in a copy of the invoice via their website. It wasn't until yesterday that I received a notice that I had to pay, here goes: 180 dollars! How on earth is that possible?! That's more than a third of the value!

Ofcourse I had to go on and pay it otherwise I could say bye bye to my cards (includes a Rodman Auto Letterman booklet /19). I had actually considered manipulating the invoice but was concerned that there might be an original copy of the invoice included in the package. Didn't want to face criminal charges there.

Apart from the ridiculous costs for customs clearance what also upsets me is the tremendous delay. Some of the cards I had actually bought with a view to perhaps getting them signed at last Friday's Spain game (including a 2009-10 Playoff NT Colossal Materials Pau Gasol http://images.checkoutmycards.com/zoom/5...ed2755.jpg ). Knowing I was so close to getting a card signed by him, thinking it could have been this one just makes me cry.

Anyone else had similar situations with customs?

[will23c1982]

I had a very similar incident (although thankfully not as bad as yours, I really feel for you man).

I have ordered cards from COMC over a dozen times. I always check the 'gift' box but, one time, I forgot.

Big mistake.

The cards were only worth about $50 but that's above the customs threshold. Therefore I had to pay about $15 customs tax, which really annoyed me.

I recently ordered another lot of cards from COMC. I checked the 'gift' box but I've yet to receive them, so now you've got me worried that I'll be facing another customs bill. I figured it was a one off but maybe customs are beginning clamp down on these kind of purchases. It seems ridiculous.

[jpleazme805]

sorry to hear your guy's pain. I hate customs. I serve in the Navy and recently was deployed to South America, traveling port to port. We hit four different countries... they charged us a grip of money to ship our supplies from the states down there. Some of the customs charges were crazy.. & you would think the US Government would get some type of deal, especially for military material and supplies.. nope. One shipment, we had to pay over $20K in shipping charges & customs fees. This is on top of the freight charges we already paid to get the material to that country's closest airport to the port we were visiting. I am in charge of setting everything up and paying for it..

I am lucky I have not had to pay customs. I have bought a lot of cards from HK.. just about every one cost $5.00 shipping 1-50 cards, and it came registered.. I had to pay about $9-12 to ship overseas with tracking number.. forgot if it was certified or registered. I think certified was cheaper.. I don't understand how some countries can have cheap shipping (with tracking) and others have high cost shipping & then have to may outrageous custom charges on top of that.. Wish there was a rule to sports cards...