From NL with love: Sending Christmas parcels to the US
Brandon Hartley
If you’re wondering if it’s even possible to send gift packages to friends and family members in the United States this holiday season, you’re not alone.
In August, PostNL announced it was abruptly halting shipments to the US due to concerns over tariffs. A few weeks later, the company resumed its services but with a few significant caveats when it comes to gift shipments.
At the time of this writing, you can ship them to the US via PostNL and other postal companies like UPS. However, you’ll probably want to keep the total value under $100 – the limit for avoiding import fees.
“This applies to consumer shipments sent as gifts to the US and it’s set by the US government,” PostNL spokesman Jelger Zee told Dutch News.
Customers should also prepare themselves for the complex requirements for each package when they go to PostNL’s website to purchase and print shipping labels.
Gift givers have to provide information including clear descriptions of the contents, 10-digit-HS codes, and details about what country each item comes from. To make things even more confusing, PostNL’s system is currently refusing to create labels for anything valued over €80.
The end of American trade exemption rules last summer, which allowed shipments valued up to $800 to avoid tariffs, has had a dramatic impact on postal shipments to the United States from overseas. The UN’s Universal Postal Union (UPU) said it had practically ‘come to a halt’ in August and fallen by 81%.
While this has created plenty of headaches for commercial shippers and anyone who wants to send their relatives over $800 worth of kruidnoten this holiday season, it means your packages should get to the United States fairly quickly – so long as the label has all the right information.
Those with friends and family in Britain should expect little in the way of changes for shipments this holiday season, but the problems created by Brexit and the introduction of import duties have led many people to abandon sending parcels altogether.
Dutch News also checked in with a few other shipping companies to see how they’re handling things this year.
FedEx didn’t respond to an inquiry while UPS said in a statement it had “various small package, consolidated freight, warehousing, and customs brokerage solutions to mitigate backlogs and help our customers compliantly export to the US.”
PostNL has also created a handy deadline chart to help customers make sure their international packages get to their destinations before Christmas. Further details can be found on the holiday page on the company’s website.
But if you are sending gifts to the US in the coming weeks, keep in mind that all of this could change at any moment.
“If you print out the shipping forms and fill them out correctly, we’ll send your packages to America,” a clerk at a PostNL sales point told Dutch News last week. “But once they cross the border, we can’t make any guarantees. It depends on how things are going over there.”
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