Shipping to EU, customs trouble

Something for publishers/creators to consider when shipping abroad:

Make sure the name of the sender is clearly marked on your parcel, and logged with the postal/delivery/fulfilment service. I’ve had some trouble with the customs here in Finland where I’ve had to declare a parcel (a rpg book) to pay VAT, but either it has no sender name, or the sender name is not the same as your name / public name of your shop / company.

Sometimes the tracking info reveals the US state it was processed, which helps identify the parcel, but it’s still sketchy sometimes.

This leaves me in an awkward situation where I’m having to guess what parcel it is (i have backed lots of kickstarters, so i’m not always sure which product it is this time), by going through Kickstarter status emails.

This is not a problem with RPGs alone, but I thought i’d let folks know this can happen. Especially now that EU law forces tax (Finnish VAT, in my case) to always be collected from online purchases, parcels get stuck in customs more often.

Anyone else had this problem?

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I missed this thread and just found it by chance, but I would like to add my experience: the latest RPG book that I bought from the USA didn’t have any VAT issues (although I expected them and nearly fell into a scam because of this) but it was clearly marked as a book (some countries have VAT exemptions/discounts for books so remember to tick the appropriate box when you ship) and it contained all the data about the sender, even if it was hidden to me by the postal service.

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