Importing/Exporting from UK to US

[AgentofOblivion]

Anyone have any experience with this?  I'm hoping to import CDs/vinyl from a UK distribution company but have quickly learned the process can be expensive and a huge pain in the ass.  Is it a big pain in the ass if you're only dealing with quantities like ~20 records?  I've never shipped anything internationally before.

[MichaelZodiac]

I'm based on the mainland and have ordered tons of goods transatlantic, records, pedals, my bass, etc. If you can, let them label it as a gift, that way you can hopefully avoid any import tax. If there's tracking, awesome but in itself not that necessary. Unless you're dealing with complete fuckups, it should be ok. Anyhow, I've only ordered the other way around (US -> EU/UK) so it could be entirely different but postal services worldwide are about the same (overpriced and sucky) imo so not much difference is noticeable.

[AgentofOblivion]

Thanks for the response.  I'm thinking things are different because I'm buying wholesale and then reselling it.  If it were for personal use it might be different, but I think all sorts of forms need to be filled out to import as inventory of a retail business.

[Mr. Foxen]

Dunno if marking as gift works on the US side, doesn't here, its an invitation for the revenue to open it up and guess what its worth and tax accordingly. Commercial sample or returned for repair under warranty is the import fraud method. Basically, shipping stuff to the states for me involved printing five copy invoices and sticking it to the package, and handing over to my courier, and that was about it.

[FullCustom]

What about bringing them in through Canada?

[Hemisaurus]

Normally you'd license it, and press your own copies, but I guess that won't really work for small scale. I've bought 20-30 CD's from a German distributor, and didn't pay import, or fill out any forms, but it was personal use.

If it's going to cost you more than a person could order their own personal copy from Europe for, might be a bad idea.