Lately I ebay almost all my motherboards from Eastern Europe. So far I'm batting 3 for 3 on getting cheap, fully functional boards. Not the greatest sample size, but I'm happy with the results. Never had a hud, or an issue with customs.

Namrok wrote on 2021-12-14, 14:54:

Lately I ebay almost all my motherboards from Eastern Europe. So far I'm batting 3 for 3 on getting cheap, fully functional boards. Not the greatest sample size, but I'm happy with the results. Never had a hud, or an issue with customs.

Nice to hear that. Found many reasonable listings on ebay from Eastern Europe. Had infact ordered few sound cards from Russia and arrived without any issues whatsoever. But motherboards are a different story. So which country are you from? (I'm from India BTW 😁)

I'm in the United States. I'm under the impression our customs is a joke. But maybe I've just gotten lucky.

Russia and the eastern European countries seem to have a large amount of older hardware in general, I've bought a few old motherboards and GPUs from Russia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Belarus, Kazakhstan and a couple of other old eastern bloc countries. Never had an issue with customs or communication and one motherboard I bought from Russia the guy went above an beyond what most sellers do to make sure the board got to me in amazing condition. Never seen such great packaging and it got to Australia far faster than even packages from the US do.

Even motherboards and old hardware from China arrives here quickly and in working order.

I used to skip over stuff from Russia but if recent interactions with sellers from there are any indication perhaps I should be looking to buy from there a bit more often, they seem to have a lot of pretty rare older hardware that is hard to find from the US and the sellers I have bought from really seem to want to change perceptions about buying from Russia.

Have lived in the US for a while and also imported a couple of items like watches and small electronics during my stay there. Never ever had an issue with importing there. In my experience, the US customs officials are far better and more professional than the Indian ones. I miss US so much 😀

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-14, 15:21:

Russia and the eastern European countries seem to have a large amount of older hardware in general, I've bought a few old motherboards and GPUs from Russia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Belarus, Kazakhstan and a couple of other old eastern bloc countries. Never had an issue with customs or communication and one motherboard I bought from Russia the guy went above an beyond what most sellers do to make sure the board got to me in amazing condition. Never seen such great packaging and it got to Australia far faster than even packages from the US do.

Even motherboards and old hardware from China arrives here quickly and in working order.

I used to skip over stuff from Russia but if recent interactions with sellers from there are any indication perhaps I should be looking to buy from there a bit more often, they seem to have a lot of pretty rare older hardware that is hard to find from the US and the sellers I have bought from really seem to want to change perceptions about buying from Russia.

Exactly. With my first order from Russia, the sound card was packed so well, it took me over 20 mins just to get rid of the bubble wrapping. The subsequent ones were lightly packed, but not a concern as they all arrived safely.

stealthjoe wrote on 2021-12-14, 15:31:

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-14, 15:21:

Russia and the eastern European countries seem to have a large amount of older hardware in general, I've bought a few old motherboards and GPUs from Russia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Belarus, Kazakhstan and a couple of other old eastern bloc countries. Never had an issue with customs or communication and one motherboard I bought from Russia the guy went above an beyond what most sellers do to make sure the board got to me in amazing condition. Never seen such great packaging and it got to Australia far faster than even packages from the US do.

Even motherboards and old hardware from China arrives here quickly and in working order.

I used to skip over stuff from Russia but if recent interactions with sellers from there are any indication perhaps I should be looking to buy from there a bit more often, they seem to have a lot of pretty rare older hardware that is hard to find from the US and the sellers I have bought from really seem to want to change perceptions about buying from Russia.

Exactly. With my first order from Russia, the sound card was packed so well, it took me over 20 mins just to get rid of the bubble wrapping. The subsequent ones were lightly packed, but not a concern as they all arrived safely.

I suspect the guys from Russia know full well about their postal service 🤣, the motherboard I ordered that had Amazing packaging was in an antistatic bag, packed in Styrofoam in a hard cardboard box wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap in a light cardboard mailing box wrapped in packaging tape that was impossible to tear without using a Stanley knife.. Took me quite a while to free it from its prison, had a good laugh with the seller and thanked him for the amazing packaging job.

TrashPanda wrote:

the motherboard I ordered that had Amazing packaging was in an antistatic bag, packed in Styrofoam in a hard cardboard box wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap in a light cardboard mailing box wrapped in packaging tape that was impossible to tear without using a Stanley knife

Russian box: I AM BULLETPROOF!

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2021-12-14, 16:45:

TrashPanda wrote:

the motherboard I ordered that had Amazing packaging was in an antistatic bag, packed in Styrofoam in a hard cardboard box wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap in a light cardboard mailing box wrapped in packaging tape that was impossible to tear without using a Stanley knife

Russian box: I AM BULLETPROOF!

It was postal worker proof thats for sure !

Could have dropped it from the 10th floor and it would be all good, im also good for bubble wrap for the next 10 years, ended up with a large roll of it.

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-14, 15:21:

Russia and the eastern European countries seem to have a large amount of older hardware in general, I've bought a few old motherboards and GPUs from Russia, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Belarus, Kazakhstan and a couple of other old eastern bloc countries.

I can back back this. Iv ordered a ton from bloc sellers in the past and all have arrived safely and in one piece. Absolutely no complaints.

Had a motherboard packed so tight with bubble wrap it took a few minutes to get it out, 🤣.

Depends on your country laws and duty exemption. USA has very high duty exemption - around 800USD if my memory is correct. EU had it set only at 22€ and since 1st of July every packet imported into EU has local VAT added. In my country this is 22% on import value. The declared value on CN23 form isn't good enough and you have to send additional proof of purchase price. Sometimes local VAT is already added when you pay (eBay...) and this has to be entered into IOSS system by the seller. If it's not, you pay VAT again at hand over or the packet gets rejected and returned to the sender.

If before 1.7.2021 you could get lucky and customs passed the packet without inspection. Now every packet gets inspected. This in turn slows down the delivery by around 7-10 days.

PS:
I had bought some motherboards from Ukraine and Russia - some were very badly packaged - just wrapped in a newspaper and sellotape - but the hardware survived somehow.

kixs wrote on 2021-12-14, 17:29:

The declared value on CN23 form isn't good enough and you have to send additional proof of purchase price.

Does it do any good if the eBay "packing slip" is included in the box or the outside packet, which shows the item price, shipping, and tax amounts paid?

It looks like the US is one of the better and lenient places to import electronics/computer parts(old or new) without much hazzles. Even better than Canada I suppose as I read on another thread about a person having to shell out huge sums as duty on some imports.

Let me share my experience with the customs. First had won an auction and got a motherboard. Next purchased another different motheboard a few days later. Both reached my country in about 10 days time. On the 12th day or so, the second motherboard reached customs and it was held and released 2 days later. When the parcel arrived at my door, was shocked to see a huge duty amount (~42% of the amount paid). First of all the seller forgot to declare the package value (which is an absolute must for importing into my country). Somehow the package slipped in through the postal network. The customs officer placed an arbitrary value on the board and imposed the duty. I refused the package requesting reassessment and it was sent back to the assessing officer.

The first ordered motherboard arrived 4-5 days later at the customs. It was held again similar to the previous one. But in this case, the package was never released and is still held. Yesterday I received a call from the customs office. Was a kind of perplexed as never had I received any calls from customs despite having ordered several packages (albeit smaller ones) from overseas. The officer stated that a motherboard and processor were received in a package and requested me for a fair value (The officer was expecting that I state the value to be quite high). I explained that these are old boards and the price paid excluding shipping is quite minimal. He then requested for the credit card statement and invoice I used to pay for these boards. Sent it some time later through mail. After a while received a reply stating a clause from the import/export rules book that used/second hand products are restricted from importing and that I need an import license to be able to get these boards released. Seriously!!! WTH!!! Just for 2 boards and that too old ones. Had ordered a couple of old/used computer parts before without any issues.

This is the reality of Indian customs. Corrupt and nefarious.

In the USA we pay nothing to import stuff.

It arrives at some international port, usually stays there for maybe a day or three and is sent on it's way. And no, they don't open anything as far as I am aware.

That being said, I ordered an ASUS P5A from a retailer (dreamhardware) for a decent price and it arrived DOA. Since I didn't order through eBay there was nothing I could do about it because they wanted me to ship it back which would have cost me almost as much as I originally paid for it.

Usually stuff arrives very well packaged.. some of it looking very much like the sender must have used a whole roll of brown packing taper to wrap the box / padded envelope.

I’ve ordered several. Some have come in broken but no customs issues.

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-14, 15:50:

I suspect the guys from Russia know full well about their postal service 🤣, the motherboard I ordered that had Amazing packaging was in an antistatic bag, packed in Styrofoam in a hard cardboard box wrapped in several layers of bubble wrap in a light cardboard mailing box wrapped in packaging tape that was impossible to tear without using a Stanley knife.. Took me quite a while to free it from its prison, had a good laugh with the seller and thanked him for the amazing packaging job.

Thank goodness I didn't order any motherboards from Russia. Would have been slapped with 400% duty in such a case 😀

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-12-15, 03:33:

In the USA we pay nothing to import stuff.

That's one of the perks of living in advanced economies. Here in India, imports are being restricted to a great extent due to the "Make in India movement" (which is a colossal failure IMO). The situation is only getting worse.

Everyday across Indian ports, tens to hundreds of packets get stuck with the customs whereby the consignees often get slapped with heavy duties or packages held due to restrictive nature. Many of these packages are genuine and valid goods (not contrabands in anyway). And guess where these contents finally end up? Yes! Distributed amongst the customs officers and their families........for free!!

I've also had good experiences importing motherboards from Russia, Ukraine, etc. Packaging was not always ideal, but never got any damaged items.

Regarding the import taxes applied by customs to these types of items in many countries with the "protect local business" excuse, it is basically a legal scam by the governments to keep the pockets of the customs officers full of money. Here in South America customs officers are disgustingly corrupt and will assign an arbitrarily high price to items to either make you pay a ridiculous sum or just keep your stuff. Politicians adore protectionism over here and they apply it over and over again despite it always being a failure, I guess that lobbying and bribing by crummy local "businessmen" is too hard to resist (Argentina and Brazil are the worst examples).

I guess I'm lucky that my country allows full tax exemption on a few packages per year up to USD 200 each, but still had a few run-ins with customs officers regarding the price of some packages... once I imported a box with a few Roland MIDI modules from Japan, took me a while to get that one out of there but luckily the customs assholes were unable to understand what these things were, and the freight forwarder in Japan had marked a low price on the package.

shamino wrote on 2021-12-14, 23:32:

kixs wrote on 2021-12-14, 17:29:

The declared value on CN23 form isn't good enough and you have to send additional proof of purchase price.

Does it do any good if the eBay "packing slip" is included in the box or the outside packet, which shows the item price, shipping, and tax amounts paid?

Actually they don't care what is on or in the box. With CN23 form sender already declares items and value.

Everything is checked with X-rays and usually only opened if it's no other way - I had it opened only one time when they weren't happy with my documents. You have to take screenshots of paid items - eBay invoice, bank statement... PayPal usually isn't good enough and at least number of items have to match the declaration. Also if some item is suspiciously cheap, they will find equivalent/similar item on eBay.