Thursday, March 29, 2012

Indian Custom Duties - Upto 60%

Here are the details of what the customs charges me, this is for 50 USD Skechers shoes

BASIC CUSTOMS DUTY - Rs 302.10
COUNTER VAILING DUTY - Rs 398.77
ADDITIONAL CUSTOM DUTY - Rs 149.72
EDUCATION CESS - Rs 21.03
HANDLING FEE - Rs 300.00
SERVICE TAX 1O% - Rs 30.00
EDUCATION CE55 2.00% - Rs 0.60
HIGHER EDUCATION CESS 1.00% Rs 0.30

TOTAL Rs 1202.52


Think twice / thrice .... as many times as you can before ordering something from USA.

MyUS.com - Shopping Experience

I got an AMEX Gold Card some time back and they are tied up with MyUS.com, using which you can buy things from USA and Ship them to India. Here is my experience.

I bought Skechers Shoes from www.shoes.com, the shoes cost 50 USD. The membership fee is waved off for 1st year for AMEX customers. MyUS.com has a good personal shopper where you can just put the details of the product you want to buy and pay for it, they will do the rest, but they charge a fee ($10 + Any USA shipping fee), for me it came to 20 USD. So total of 70 USD.

The package arrived at their FLORIDA Address. As soon as it arrived, I received an email from MyUS.com for my permission to ship it. The shipping cost after 20% discount was 40 USD. So the total came to 110 USD.

I checked the Indian Customs website and it said that anything below Rs 5000 (=100 USD) is free and will not be charged, but when the package arrived, I was shocked, that it asked me to pay, 1200 as custom charges (approx 25 USD), that's almost 60% of the shoe price, I have no idea why so much of custom charges.

So the total cost of 50 USD shoe came to

50 + 20 + 40 + 25 = 135 USD, more than twice the cost of the product !!!!

PROS (MyUS.com) -

1. Excellent communication through Emails.
2. Clarity on charges.
3. Good Package.
4. Through AMEX, discounts are available.

CONS (MyUS.com)

1. They don't mark the product as GIFT.
2. There is no calculation of custom or an estimate on how much it will cost.

FINAL words

There are other websites which include everything, including the customs etc, like www.shopyourworld.com, ebay.in (Global Shipping Program) and they are good, I have bought earlier from them. I thought, MyUS.com would be cheaper, but it turned out to me at least 20 - 30 USD more expensive. One should one use it, if you are getting some Deal, like the product is on 80% discount or something, otherwise use www.shopyourworld.com or Ebay.in or similar websites.