Customs charges

[Wisnu]

Well, Bea Cukai didn't get the memo. I arrived in Indonesia on 1 May 2021 and had to pay 40% tax for my smartphone: 10% import tax, 10% VAT, 20% income tax.

you are referring to the taxes and levies for IMEI registration; not the same case.
If this the case, the VAT is 11%. Dont forget to deduct USD 500.

 

[Wisnu]

Relying on normal post (not DHL), there is more than 50% failure rate (package never arrives) so I would never do this again.

DHL must be very happy with you.
I wonder how you get the information more than 50% failure rate.
I and my brother never use DHL for shipment of the stuffs we purchased. We received all albeit some delay.

 

[Helpful Herbert]

I wonder how you get the information more than 50% failure rate.

Personal experience since 2021. [before Covid everything worked much better, but since then it doesn't work any more, so using DHL is my only option, and even then the customs officials stole some items from my DHL package once!]

 

[Wisnu]

Personal experience since 2021. [before Covid everything worked much better, but since then it doesn't work any more, so using DHL is my only option, and even then the customs officials stole some items from my DHL package once!]

then my daughter will say 100% failure rate of using UPS to send the document in USA or 100% failure rate to send doc with Post France.

3 days ago, I received my unaccompanied air freights shipment total more than 100kg (road bicycles, PC desktop, sport equipment). The custom official did open all the boxes, no problem, received completely. No need to pay import duty - all as per the regulation.

10 years ago, I received my container, none missing.

Mid of Feb I will receive my container of 175 boxes, thousand items - let see if anything missing.

 

[Hawk256]

In my experience with less than 10 transactions that involved imports, 30% doesn't seem that accurate. Most of the time it's actually more. I have paid as high as 60% when they mispriced the shipment but refused to ammend their pricing based on the actual invoice. In another case I bought my wife some lotions last time I was in the US but forgot them. Had a friend send them here. $30 worth of lotion with $50 in shipping and $15 in dollars in import taxes plus other fees of around $10. I knew I was going to lose but had it sent anyway. Never had a failure to get the the goods but always payed dearly for them.

 

[Jaime C]

It’s always helpful to have friends who can bring stuff with them. I brought about 150 kg of stuff from the US last month. Mostly food items that aren’t available here.

I had forgotten a few Mexican food items, like corn tortillas, and mentioned it to a friend here before Christmas. He had a quick trip to the US a few days later, and brought me the corn tortillas, cans of refried beans, etc.

 

[Balifrog]

Letters are different - when someone sends a letter from their overseas post office they usually buy a stamp and off it goes. They rely on the post office here to deliver it and they clearly don't deliver any post from ireland (and from wherever you are from too). I think some post offices have agreements with ones overseas re delivery and I dont think POS indonesia has many/ any of these agreements so they dont deliver the letters.

If a letter is sent with registered mail it will arrive becuase POS indonesia are paid for the delivery.

Parcel delivery from overseas never goes missing in my experience (Fedex/ DHL etc.) - i just get hit with lots of charges and sometimes forms to fill out which are annoying so I almost never order anything from overseas.

Regulary receive letters.from France (bank, pension..) but yep sometimes one go missing.

Parcels, never one went lost.

Never use DHL or FEDEX, their prices are usually ridiculous.

Than again, I don't import 100 kg of stuff....

 

[harryopal1]

Thanks for all the responses. It seems the prevailing view is buy locally. My experience with binoculars is that really cheap ones do not align properly when looking at distant objects so that a plane on the horizon looks like two planes with the binoculars. Can anyone please recommend a likely shop near Jimbaran in Bali?

As for postal deliveries, a son in Perth wanted to send a letter. I told him people don't have letterboxes and delivery is most unlikely. (Actually Australia Post has now reduced deliveries to every other day instead of daily due to a falling off of letter volumes.) My son sent a letter anyway in November and to my surprise I found it pushed into the front gate just two months after being posted.

Wisnu, what is the name of your brother's website? Thanks in anticipation of response.

 

[Wisnu]

Wisnu, what is the name of your brother's website? Thanks in anticipation of response.

Not a dedicated website. he has small stationary store in Kota Wisata Bogor and also sell on-line via Tokopedia, Shopee and other e-commerce.

 

[mas_dam]

With Regulation Permendag Nomor 31 tahun 2023 there is now a minimum value of USD100 for cross-border e-commerce imports i.e. from Aliexpress. Everything below USD 100 value is forbidden. Aliexpress doesn't offer shipping to Indonesia anymore.

It's unlikely that exactly the item you want to buy will be on the "positive list" of exclusions from the above regulation.

The bincolulars for USD 159 > USD 100 would be not subject to this limitation.