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Author Topic: Adventures in shipping Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 10-06-2014 03:22 PM                        I mentioned last week that I was setting up a secure laptop and sending it to the person who wants it. This is the first time I've sent something like this to any destination that wasn't in Canada or USA, and it was far more of an undertaking that I had anticipated. I was supposed to ship it by DHL, so I got the box packed yesterday, weighed and measured it, and tried to ship it this morning. After two hours on the phone with DHL, and having talked to seven(!) different people, it turns out that I can't ship it by DHL because I can't pay them. Melville doesn't have, and never has had, door to door mail delivery. Therefore I, and everyone else in town, have a post office box at the post office here and all of my mail is put into that. I walk to the post office every day to pick it up. My credit card bills are delivered to my post office box. Where else would they be sent, right? The only way to pay DHL is with a credit card. However, because my the address on file for my credit card (post office box) isn't my street address, DHL's payment system rejects all attempts to make a payment. Two hours and seven people later, I was told that the only way that I can ship something via DHL will be to physically carry it into their office in Regina, which is a two hour drive from here. And even if I made that drive, what are the chances that when I arrive there they will tell me that I need form XYZ that I don't have, and I'll have to go and get that and return, making this into a multi-day, multi-trip odyssey. Time for Plan B. I see a FedEx truck in town every day, so get on the phone to them. Turns out that there is no pickup in Melville. The FedEx guy who comes here is FedEx Ground only, and he can't pick up FedEx Air shipments. The only way for me to ship FedEx air is, guess what, carry the package into their office in Regina myself. On to Plan C. Canada Post offers a Priority Worldwide Air service that has an expected delivery date of October 15, which is the same date that DHL offered, and the price was about the same too. $334.36. That's the most expensive stamp that I've ever bought, but at least the thing is now on its way to the destination. I never would have thought that shipping a package would be a most-of-the-day adventure. I receive packages from FedEx and DHL all the time, but never tried shipping anything out with them that wasn't already prepaid by someone else. I mostly send freight out by bus. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for overseas packages like this one. But now I know if the situation ever comes up again. First stop: Canada Post. Edit: I just noticed that the fine print on the receipt form that I got for this box from the post office says "International delivery by FedEx Express". So I guess it ended up going FedEx anyway.  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 10-07-2014 04:58 AM                     I will spare you the details of my "adventures in shipping", but for that price, you would at least expect an end to end service (including pickup at your door)... I've sent pallets full of stuff around the globe for less, although that went via ocean freight and not airmail . Keep in mind that the receiving party will probably also have to pay stuff like import taxes and other duties e.g. VAT. To screw you even further, they are most often based on the TOTAL price: contents AND shipping. You can try to ship it as a gift, but in many cases they don't fall for that and they start estimating...  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 10-07-2014 12:57 PM                    While probably not as costly as carrying it to the destination yourself seems like it would subsidize a good portion of a trip there, were you so inclined!  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 10-07-2014 03:24 PM                        Even if you take it yourself, you can still be whacked for taxes and duties at the airport. I was once selected for a full customs check at Manchester (England), arriving on a flight from the US. My laptop was new and looked it (I was living in England at the time and had bought it just before the outbound journey), and the customs inspector suspected that I'd bought it in America to avoid the 20% sales tax I'd have paid (and in fact did pay) in the UK. I didn't have the receipt for it, and even pointing out the UK keyboard layout and power cord with a UK plug on the end didn't convince him. I ended up paying 145 UK pounds in excise duty, and eventually got around 90 of them refunded after a lot of appeals paperwork. In Frank's case, though, surely buying the laptop locally at its destination would have been a lot cheaper than taking a $334 hit to ship it?  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 10-07-2014 03:48 PM                        It would absolutely be cheaper to purchase the laptop at the destination location. In fact, the laptop owner already has a laptop (or several, I'm not really sure). The objective wasn't the laptop as such. The configuration and setup was the important part, and the actual hardware involved is strictly incidental. I don't think it's currently possible to zip down to your local office supply store and purchase a laptop that is pre-configured with Centos 7 (instead of MS Windows Whatever) and set up to allow secure remote access (by me, in this case) to complete the setup to be what the end user requires. If it was possible for her to do it locally, it absolutely would have been cheaper and it would have saved me a lot of time into the bargain. I considered creating an image on my computer here with Virtual Box and then sending her the image to have natively installed on a locally purchased computer, but there seemed to be far too many potential pitfalls involved in that scheme to try it. She would have to find a computer that the image would work with (which took me a whole day to do myself, and I actually know what I'm doing) plus probably find a computer tech at her location who is trustworthy and knows what he's doing to install the image for her since I'll guarantee she couldn't do it herself. Simply running a Virtual Box image on a Windows host wouldn't meet the security needs. We're getting rid of Windows, not installing more software on top of it. Usually when I do this sort of a setup it's a "bring it to me and I'll set it up for you" operation. I occasionally do it on an I'll-ship-it-to-you basis as well, but again, I don't remember ever shipping one of these things on anything other than the bus, or maybe by ordinary post office mail. Most often bus freight; it's pretty reliable and doesn't cost the earth.  |  IP: Logged Steve Kraus Film God Posts: 4094 From: Chicago, IL, USA Registered: May 2000 posted 10-07-2014 06:28 PM                    Can't be too careful in the CSIS!  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 10-07-2014 07:07 PM                     quote: Leo Enticknap I ended up paying 145 UK pounds in excise duty, and eventually got around 90 of them refunded after a lot of appeals paperwork. Sure it was you who was all wrong, since you didn't carry the necessary paperwork! You deserved it! It's always great how you tend to end up holding the stick after "the law" goes awry. They should actually have compensated you for your lost time and paperwork... Sometimes movies are just a bit too close to reality...  |  IP: Logged Frank Cox Film God Posts: 2234 From: Melville Saskatchewan Canada Registered: Apr 2011 posted 10-07-2014 07:08 PM                        Some people like to have a reasonable assurance that their confidential information (investment portfolio management, bank accounts, business details) are secure. I'll be the first to admit that there is no such thing as absolute 100% security on any computer system. But a properly maintained Linux system is far more secure than any computer that runs MS Windows. That's largely due to its design (security wins over end user convenience, always) but also partly due to being a smaller target and a more diverse ecosystem than MS Windows so there are less bad guys writing malware for Linux, therefore less chance of encountering a working virus or other bad thing under normal use. I really don't see that as a bad or or a comical thing.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 10-07-2014 08:55 PM                        quote: Marcel Birgelen Sure it was you who was all wrong, since you didn't carry the necessary paperwork! You deserved it! I just had the bad luck to be plucked out of the line at random and encounter a customs officer who was down on his quota, I guess. For about 10 years before that incident I made 3-5 transatlantic trips a year, and never once had a customs check at either end. As you point out, the small print of the law does say that they can require you either to prove that the necessary taxes and duties have been paid on everything you bring back into your home country (i.e. that you took them out in the first place), or to cough up. And of course I know countless Europeans who have bought small, light and expensive consumer items in the US and sailed through customs without being given as much as a second glance (a friend in the airline biz tells me that the nightly flights from Portland to Amsterdam are only viable because of Oregon's zero sales tax: they are full of Europeans who have chosen that route home in order to pick up a cheap laptop, iPad etc., during their stopover). My only consolation is that it probably cost HMRC considerably more in staff time to process my refund/appeal paperwork than I paid them as a fee to do so.  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 10-08-2014 06:08 AM                     Yeah, they're a bit of a stickler for paperwork. Where would we be if we didn't follow the correct procedures? Up until now, I didn't have close encounters with the customs at the airport. I've been superficially checked a few times, but I fortunately wasn't selected as quota-bait. I've had my fair dealings with airport security obviously and I even once forgot to take out a RJ45/RJ11 crimping tool out of my carry-on luggage and had to explain that this isn't really useful as a weapon to a dozen of people. After I told them they can have it, I was suddenly allowed to take it with me... Then again, recently customs took one of my incoming shipments hostage for a month or two. The equipment was professionally packed into a wooden crate for shipping. The problem wasn't with the equipment, but with said wooden crate. It apparently missed the necessary documentation that it wasn't made from some kind of delicate, massively expensive and potentially forbidden hardwood...  |  IP: Logged

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