Hello ! I need to buy 2 smartphones and the only way i find is Aliexpress but i m scared about customs fee. When i was in Portugal, i had to complète a form and pay the fee with a Portugese crédit card, am i going to need a japanese card for pay them ? If some peoples already order on Aliexpress in japan, some advice would be really cool 😉 Thanks !
5 comments
Customs fee is decided by declared value not whatever you actually paid for the thing. I bought a phone a few years back from Ali. Hell, I bought a freaking bathtub! Never got a customs notice.
Ali will often write some strange things on the customs forms too, which can result in cheaper rates, but beware Ali express regular shipping as there is no way to know which provider they use, and fedex base rates before tax are brutal.
You can ask the seller how they maintain this. They can write on the package Gift or a price like 10$. I didn’t pay from Ali for the phone or laptop around 200$
There is duty to be paid on electronics.
At worst customs will ask you to pay the VAT which is 10% of the declared value (unless they open it and you have a 1000€ phone declared at 100)
I order quite often on aliexpress and never got hit by the vat (triggers usually over 10000¥ roughly?).
You will pay very little custom fee if there’s any.
I bought a high end metal 3d printer from AliExpress for $600 and paid around 2,500yen in custom fees.