Shipped a watch from Canada to US today

Today I shipped an inexpensive vintage Seiko sold on Chrono24 to a buyer in US. Previously you filled out an online Customs declaration form with description, country of origin, and declared value, and you got barcode to present to Canada Post. Any import duty was collected by US Customs from the buyer after arrival in US.
Now US Customs requires up front payment of import duty from the Seller, and will not accept packages without prepaid duty. There is a new app for Canada Post called "Zonos prepay" where I filled in description, Country of origin and declared value, as well as a photo. At that point it calculated the duty, and added a processing fee. For Japan origin watch the duty was exactly 15%. I had to pay the duty and processing fee with credit card on the app, and got a barcode receipt which I showed at Canada Post, and they incorporate "paid duty" info on the shipping barcode and the package was off.
The problem is I didn't know this when I negotiated the price and shipping total, so I did not include a duty amount on the Chrono25 invoice. But fortunately this is a pretty small amount (less than $50 CDN) which I have prepaid on buyers behalf. He agreed to pay the duty and I went ahead on trust and shipped it off. People who collect 1960 vintage Seiko tend to be ok.
If I sell another to US on Chrono24 it will be easy to calculate the duty amount on the Zonos app and include on the Chrono24 invoice so buyer pays upfront. Im guessing that every country will have their own system like this- I read many Far eastern countries and Australia have totally suspended all package shipping while they sort this mess out.
I think most US buyers are so used to buying with the now-cancelled "de-minimus" policy (no duty for items under $800) that this will severely reduce their purchases from outside US.

I wonder if that’s just EMS, has anyone had UPS or FedEx do that recently and try to make the sender pay?

Here in Australia it’s packages worth more than $150 AUD that are no longer being shipped to the US by Auspost (EMS), and DHL is also cutting off anything over $100 USD but I haven’t heard anything about FedEx or UPS, being US based I can’t imagine they can afford to cease delivering to their own country.

We might actually have to split the eBay recommended thread into US non-US to make it easier for people to find stuff that won’t cause them headaches in transit.

Yep…I think the 26th was the cutoff for outgoing packages to be exempt from the prepaid duties. The 29th was the cutoff on the US side.

This is how the US avoids having to do the work on all the incoming shipments.

eBay is rolling out international shipping for Canadian sellers as a result of this as well…

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Announ...ing-is-coming-to-Canada-this-fall/ba-p/526003

I've quit looking at watches from outside the US for the time being. There are just too many unknowns at the moment and I'd rather not spend money on something I don't have confidence will arrive.

We're likely going to add sales region visibility and filtering for the sales forums, so it's obvious when you're buying direct from US sellers.

and having the exportee pay the import tax...
You could ask for reimbursement from the importer, but I would think this often doesn't happen.

On Chrono24 when a buyer indicates interest you see where they are, and Canada Post has the app to calculate the duty and you can add as line item on invoice. I saw Ebay notice they are developing a comprehensive international system to handle all duty and tax. For private sale here on OF you will know where buyer is from and do the same so buyer pays duty up front to seller, and seller doesnt have to chase after it later.

I think youre missing the point. US Customs now requires duty to be paid by shipper or wont accept package. So seller needs to know what duty is and add to invoice up front. Zonos prepay is for Canada Post not sure if other countries have similar.

Mark my words, there is about to be an entirely new genre of scams targeting people via this.

Overseas sellers will claim you need to prepay your tariff with them, separately from any buyer protection, then when the transaction is reversed you’ll be out that amount.

People will be sent fake links to dodgy sites to take their tariff prepayment on packages and get ripped off.

People will promise to reimburse after arrival but then ghost the vendor.

So many new ways to steal from people and we’ll be getting PMs from people asking for advice on how to deal with all of them in time.

That is not exactly correct. The US Postal Service now requires duty to be prepaid. But that's only relevant for packages shipped via the international postal network. For example, a package from the UK shipped by Royal Mail.

Commercial carriers such as UPS, FedEx, DHL Express (but not DHL Deutsche Poste) can, if they wish, operate as before by serving as the import agent. I believe all of those carriers are doing so. I don't know if it's profitable, but they're certainly collecting a lot more fees now that the de minimus exemption has been eliminated. I recently received a strap from Singapore. The tariffs and duties were about $1.50, but DHL Express added their standard $17 service fee, bringing the total fees to around $19.