Best way to ship extra stuff to semester abroad?

Bromfield
Fri, 15 Jan 2010 19:12:38 +0000

Supposedly, in some countries this helps avoid duties. FWIW



Duties fees were a huge problem when I sent a coat to D2 in Moscow. I sent it via UPS (apparently Fedex is the way to go in Moscow)–indicated that it was a used coat for a student. Russian customs wanted her to pay something like $200 for customs and it had already cost me $175 to mail it there (it was really light and I stuffed it into a fairly small box). Long-story short–the secretary at her program said D2 shouldn’t accept the package. It came back to me here in the US, but UPS wouldn’t give me my money back. Later, D2 had her wallet stolen–I mailed her a replacement credit card via FEDEX–she got it, but even though I sent it for 2-day air, she got the card 14 days after I had sent it. A friend of mine was going to Moscow and she offered to meet D2 and bring her a down coat.