Oh my goodness, this is hard to read.
You have a lot of misconceptions about the postal system and Customs.
@natureboy1959 wrote:
A number of purchases recently from overseas. Now with the advent of GST on all overseas purchases and 'services' including post, there would seem to be a number of issues regarding processing through Australian Customs. Firstly when one pays for expedited post with tracking which is quite hefty, one expects a service which one has paid for. The seller may well be very efficient and in most cases they are, as they understand you have paid big bucks for the postal service.
I presume that by Expedited Shipping you mean the GSP? Firstly, no matter what ebay calls it, it is not expedited....it is notoriously slow and expensive. The best thing about it is the tracking...it is usually quite good. The couriers (FedEx) who ship the GSP items are only paid to provide economy delivery.
But all that comes to a halt, once the item arrives in Australian Customs. They have no obligation or responsibility when it comes to processing in any timely manner. One has paid GST or is liable to pay GST on the item, including the postal 'service'. That service is expedited shipping with tracking. The trackiing disappears once it hits the black hole known as Australian Customs, where it can sit indefinitely.
Customs don't go out of their way to hold onto parcels for any length of time....they have no reason to do so. The tracking does not disappear when the parcel hits Customs....it is on hold until the item starts moving again. The Customs service does not have anything to do with the tracking..... the delivery service can not do anything until the item clears Customs.
Items coming through the GSP actually clear Customs very quickly as they are pre cleared by the shipping company....All the parcels are listed with class of item and value. Customs are only interested in items with a value of over $1000 as they are responsible for collecting the GST on those items....they may take a little longer to clear Customs as they have to notify the customer and wait for them to pay the amount owing.
The less valuable items can clear Customs within hours of arriving in the country.....they may hold a few random parcels to open but that usually only holds things up for a day or so. The most I have had anything held up is a week but that was years ago. I have not had anything opened by Customs for at least 5 years.
Seems to me - rather than charging for GST on a postal 'service' - Australian Customs should be compensating buyers for the loss of service. It is a serious loss of service. The tracking is lost or disappeared, the expedited shipping paid for is money down the drain, as the item will not be received in an expedited way more likely in timeframes that you would expect from an item that was shipped by boat.
You must be joking if you think Customs holds things up for up to 3 months, which is the time it can take for sea mail for the UK or Canada...there is no sea mail from the USA any more.
Thats a serious loss of dollars in shipping costs. To add insult to injury, you are then charged GST on the expedited with tracking costs - a service you have defintely not received! So Australian Customs rather than charging GST on shipping should actually be compensating buyers. Australian Customs are not answerable to anyone apart from their own invisible bureaucrats.
Customs are actually answerable to logistics companies...it they hold items up for no good reason the companies can kick up a right royal fuss as it costs them money too. The GSP is run by a logistics company called Pitney Bowes and they would soon make their feelings known if their shipments are held up for too long.
With advent of the GST on imports, no doubt the workers would be directed to check every single item, but they would not be sufficiently staffed to do this in a timely manner.
What absolute rubbish!! Customs officers do not check every single item for GST compliance. The shipping companies have already done that and Customs already has a copy of the lists of items that can clear immediately and those that have to have the GST collected.
Australia is still a backwater and will always be - with Government red tape getting more and more into peoples lives and with an isolationist policy, Amazon restrictions etc, I can see there will inevitably be a downward trend in sales through eBay for international sellers, which is what the Government and the Harvey Normans want. A true isolationist approach - Australia still a backwater - and really turns the clock back many decades. Welcome to the 1950's.
Why would the Government want to discourage international sales....they are getting the GST so international sales are as lucrative as Australian sales, especially the low value sales which would probably not attract GST if sold in Australia.
