bjhurley
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Upload & Sell: Off
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Mitch Alland wrote:
I marked the package, "Gift, and it was delivered. BTW, marking it as a gift was not a lie because books sent from abroad are kept by the Arles organization, unless you pick it up in person and someone else picks it up.
I marked the camera as a gift, since that's basically what it is, but I set the value at $75, which is slightly below the going price on eBay for this camera in excellent condition. I've learned the hard way that setting an unrealistically low value is an alert to customs agents who figure you are lowballing the value to avoid the recipient having to pay taxes, and that can stall things or in a worst case cause them to confiscate and destroy the item.
I've had this happen to me twice coming back to Canada from the US when I purchased items in the US. The first time was with a guitar that was made for me by a luthier in Maine. His prices are far below what he should charge, and when I declared it at the border the customs agent happened to be a guitar player and he said, "no way is this guitar that cheap; you have to prove to us that you didn't ask the luthier to falsify the receipt to reduce taxes." I had to dig through my emails to find the exchange I had with the luthier and show him the luthier's website with his price list.
It happened again last summer when an old friend in the States sold me his Leica M2-R and three Leica lenses for a ridiculously low price (about 1/10 the asking price on eBay). I had a written receipt from the seller, but when I declared the camera and lenses at the border the customs agent looked them up on eBay and didn't believe me. Unfortunately I was at a remote border crossing with no cell service and no public wifi, and while I had a Facebook Messenger conversation with my friend the phone had only stored the most recent messages and because I had no internet I couldn't go back in the history. And I didn't have my friend's phone number; my sister had it but since there was no cell service I couldn't reach her. It took me more than an hour to convince them.
Of course I could have simply not declared these items but I'm a frequent border crosser and want a legal record of anything I bring across the border, plus we've gone through a few excruciating surprise inspections on the Canadian side where the customs agents looked through all our luggage, inspected our wallets for receipts, and even examined the tags on the clothes we were wearing to see if we'd bought them in the United States. If I hadn't declared those items and got inspected, I'd be in big trouble; it's not worth the risk.
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