Sounds like extortion. - from jvandyke
Costs for importation of parts varies wildly. C. Obert & Co. will never quote a price on a part until he gets it in hand. The charges are pretty capricious and dependent on the individual agent handling the shipment. No counting on any consistency or regularity.
Chris has regularly ranted to me about the pricing. But, then again, we have been friends for 30 years, so I don't mind.
Ciao,
I have been importing car parts into the USA for a very long time. In the end, what you get charged to clear both the country of export & the US Customs agencies varies greatly. Even for the same part numbers over & over.
We recently discovered that bearing made in Germany are suddenly against the law. Used to be bearings made in Italy, so I had been going out of my way to import bearings NOT of Italian origin while they were illegal, only to get slapped out of the blue with the German thing.
My forwarder finally discovered that the German thing had happened while our shipment was in transit! Boy was that importation full of extra fees.
And not a single bearing made in Germany. But that didn't matter...
Once while visiting my forwarder's agent (we got a full tour of an Italian forwarder's business, including a tour of the warehouse where everything gets stored until it clears Italian customs), we were told flat out that there would be extra fees based upon the bribe needed by the Italian customs agent. We were advised not to export anytime near any of his kid's birthdays, his anniversary, his wife's birthday, any of the national holidays that include the giving of gifts to relatives...
None of this is predictable, and all of it influences what I must pay & what, in the end, you must pay.
But I think that in the end it all comes down to when the Customs official was last layed...
Chris Obert