Posting packages to Gibraltar? I posted a small packet to Gibraltar by Royal Mail Airmail yesterday, and everything went fine. But then when I got home, I read that apparently packets sent there need a customs declaration! Which I did not attach, as I was never instructed to at the post office. What's likely to happen? :dammit: It was a small memory card.
They'll probably conduct various science experiments on it, freeze it, throw it in the ocean, blow it up, set it on fire, chop it into 75 pieces, and then reassemble it and send it to its proper recipient. Pretty standard, really.
Here in South Africa they allso need to have a customs declaration, but if you don't have one and customs pulls it(doesn't happen often) they will send you a letter asking you to send trough a receipt for the goods and charge you a penalty/handling fee, only problem is if that letter gets lost they will ship the parcel back to sender , thats happened a lot to me :crying:, Gibralter might do the same,best would be to email them(Gibralter customs) and ask,not giving your parcel information just incase.
I went to the post office today and inquired about it... the guy said that customs isn't really an issue outside of the U.S. and Canada, so it shouldn't be a elsewhere.
Sounds like he doesn't know what he is talking about. Anytime you send something outside of the US it needs a customs declaration unless its just "correspondence". Without it I've never been able to send anything unless its domestic.
From the UK, I've been able to send items without a declaration to diferent European countries... the Republic of Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Slovakia, Sweden, Italy, Portugal, Spain. So that isn't the case with the UK.
My understanding of the rules in the UK is that anything within the EU does NOT require a customs form but anything outside does. Gibraltar is not in the EU so it should have had a customs label attached but the post office should have pointed that out! You might find that it will get to customs and is returned to sender on the grounds that the customs label was not attached (provided you put your address on the back of course). If that does happen I would raise a complaint with the post office as they should have picked up on that before taking your money for the service.
I don't know about Gibraltar but this is from my experience with customs offices in European countries: If it's an envelope most likely it won't be held up at customs. If it's a small packet and they want to know what's inside then they would contact the addressee and ask to provide a declaration on the content and it's value in order to know if customs tax is to be paid. Anyhow, I wouldn't worry too much.
