The US seller should understand that it is simply helping someone with their one time purchase, I do not plan to import these illegally and sell it here, however somehow everyone seems to understand it exactly like this.
I apologize for the language, it's uncommon for me, or at least I'd like to think so, but:
This is starting to piss me off.
Asking and expecting are two
very different things. I can understand the temptation to ask a seller nicely if they can lower the value a bit. Paying more in import taxes/fees than a product cost surely is annoying, and it is a problem. But more or less
expecting that a seller commit fraud to help you out, demonstrates an unbelievable amount of egotistical feeling of entitlement.
The reason I decided to chip in on the topic is that I live in Norway. I'm not an american defending american businesses, I'm a Norwegian, and that puts me in an even harsher boat than you. We not only have the same problem importing from the US, but we don't even have the exception when buying from an EU-country.
Do import duties, VAT and fees bother me? Yeah, they do.
Do I try to get around it? Sure. I'll try to keep my orders smaller than exception threshold (€150 for Lithuania, about €27 for Norway). I'll occasionally ask a seller if he's willing to sell me something a tad bit cheaper ("Hey, if you can sell me that thing for $36 instead of $37, I'll save $90, pretty please?"), or ask if they can split an order into multiple shipments lower than the threshold, that kind of thing.
Asking is one thing, but I would
never actually
expect them to jump through hoops for me, much less commit fraud for my sake.
tld