When Americans will understand they should set to a fairly rigid compliance? Especially on customs forms?! Especially when they don't declare anything except an unique voice "the customer paid X" (what is the value of the item? what is the cost of shipping and handling? is the seller a private? ... no information, just "the customer paid X money") and the agent at the customs, since he/she have to process several parcels per day then he/she is tempted to apply the highest fees?
It seems to them that it doesn't matter that I, the buyer, waste time (to explain things on the phone/via emails) and money this way !!!
Did the latest four US sellers I bought from understand it? It doesn't look so! eBay UK checks for this fairly rigid compliance and enforces sellers to respect it for overseas business, whereas with eBay com that's the 5th times I know this dude is not a private only because I wrote him a PM to ask him directly.
-> I think at this point it is best to always ask everything even twice before buying
eBay com looks rather different. When you read "covered by protection program" it can get cancelled if the seller writes "no return accepted" which is against European law but it's somehow OK for them, and when you don't read "I am a company" in an auction it may someone who is not even a private, and again it's somehow OK for them.
Overseas business done this way is a bit problematic
WTH? Why are you trying to blame this on the Americans??? In your own words, it's your country that applies a different customs tax rate.
On E-bay in the US, the seller only puts the name and address of the buyer, the value of the item and a two or three word description of the item(s), and his name and the date on the customs form and then checks a box to say if the item is a gift, a sample or merchandise, etc and NOTHING else. There is nothing about whether the seller OR the buyer is a private person or a business.
See the
bottom form (
CN22) here
https://about.usps.com/postal-bulletin/2009/pb22269/html/updt1_008.htm This is directly from the U.S. Government's Postal Service website.
In fact, for about the last 15 years when you ship through Ebay, Ebay even prints all of the details for the seller and the seller can NOT change the value or
any of the other information. And to be very blunt about it; NO! the seller can't change the form to say that that the item is a gift!
Yes, I've shipped several thousand times overseas myself.
I can't say how your country operates with regard to customs but your posts sound absolutely delusional.
If you're unhappy about how the customs operates
in your country or about how much they charge; then you need to take that up with your own government and stop trying to blame E-bay, or it's sellers or "the Americans"! The Americans
did take action when the British tried to impose the Stamp Act in this country. Some of my own ancestors lived in North Carolina at the time and there were many people that couldn't even get legally married or to buy or sell their own land or baptize their children due to the rapacious taxes charged by Royal Governor Tryon. The tax for even a simple document amounted to over a year's income and the citizen had to make an 8o plus mile trip each way to the then state capital to pay the tax in person and in cash, something that few people on the frontier had.