Mailing your stuff to the United States

[Hill.ary 54]

Hi everyone!

 

Has anyone shipped personal belongings to the United States via either UPS or Canada Post??

 

Canada post looks to be the cheapest option as long as we keep the boxes under 66 lbs. 

 

What forms do we need to fill out to accompany it so we don’t have to pay import fees etc.?  I have already created an itemized list with values for each box. I just don’t know which form needs to be filled out for each box. Has anyone had experience with this? 

[SKB2017 95]

On 3/3/2019 at 4:39 PM, Hill.ary said:

Hi everyone!

 

Has anyone shipped personal belongings to the United States via either UPS or Canada Post??

 

Canada post looks to be the cheapest option as long as we keep the boxes under 66 lbs. 

 

What forms do we need to fill out to accompany it so we don’t have to pay import fees etc.?  I have already created an itemized list with values for each box. I just don’t know which form needs to be filled out for each box. Has anyone had experience with this? 

A few things....

You can't ship your items to the US before you yourself have entered the US at your POE.

If someone is going to ship your goods for you, then you have to also provide a letter authorizing them to process the import of your goods for you.

Also, you need to show proof that you are a permanent resident of the US so you will need to either provide a photocopy of your GC or photocopy of the Visa in your passport.  I was told that i will need one photocopy per each box I'm going to ship. 

You need to fill out the form 3299.  You can get it from here https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/107/noIntercept/1/session/L3RpbWUvMTU1MTc2MzE4Ni9zaWQvWjJBWjdWOG8%3D

 

[Hill.ary 54]

9 hours ago, SKB2017 said:

A few things....

You can't ship your items to the US before you yourself have entered the US at your POE.

If someone is going to ship your goods for you, then you have to also provide a letter authorizing them to process the import of your goods for you.

Also, you need to show proof that you are a permanent resident of the US so you will need to either provide a photocopy of your GC or photocopy of the Visa in your passport.  I was told that i will need one photocopy per each box I'm going to ship. 

You need to fill out the form 3299.  You can get it from here https://help.cbp.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/107/noIntercept/1/session/L3RpbWUvMTU1MTc2MzE4Ni9zaWQvWjJBWjdWOG8%3D

 

Sorry I should’ve mentioned that my husband already has his green card in hand. Anyway we mailed the stuff yesterday morning. Had to fill out form 3299 and attached a copy of his passport, green card and the visa in his green card to show date of activation. 

[Hill.ary 54]

In case anyone is interested in how much was spent on the boxes to ship via Canada Post (which was WAYYYYYYYY cheaper than anywhere else I looked, including UPS). 30 kg is the max weight they will ship. Also boxes have to be shorter than 170 cm or something like that.

 

We Shipped 4 Boxes:

1st Box was a total of $123.53CAD including insurance on the items (approx. $600 worth of insurance)

13.54 kg (almost 30 lbs)

18inx18inx24in

 

2nd Box was a total of $149.29CAD including insurance on the items (approximately $911 worth of insurance)

29.685 kg (65.44 lbs) 

18inx18inx24in

 

3rd Box was a total of $139.52CAD including insurance on the items (approximately $1000 worth of insurance)

27.45 kg (60.51 lbs)

18inx18inx24in

 

4th Box was a total of $49.49CAD including insurance on the items (approximately $40 worth of insurance)

4.27 kg (9.41 lbs)

16inx12inx12in

 

so we spent a total of $461.83 CAD to ship 4 boxes with a lottttt of stuff in them. I don't know if that will help any of you trying to figure out moving costs. It wasn't worth it for us to rent a newhall and drive it down, so we picked shipping it and taking the rest as carry-on luggage. We only had to pack a 1 bedroom apartment, all big items like furniture etc are going to be left behind. So basically just clothes, work supplies(tools etc), hockey gear, documents and sentimental stuff pictures collectibles etc. We also didn't need to send any of our kitchen stuff because we have brand new stuff from our wedding gifts waiting to be opened in the United States already.

 

The forms were time consuming. Bring copies of your entry stamp to activate your green card etc, basically anything that proves you have entered the U.S.  Pre-print the 3299 form before hand, and bring 1 copy of the form and the entry passport etc stuff FOR EACH BOX (we put passport, visa with stamp of entry, and copy of green card on each box). Make sure you have an itemized list with the value of each item handy. We didn't prefill the forms because we knew some of our boxes were too heavy and we would have to rearrange them at the postal office. I am not sure if we even did the forms correctly but hopefully we did. It was really hard to find exact information on how to fill them out. But if anyone has questions feel free to message me on here. I also had to fill out the Canada Post's forms too for mailing. You have to declare the goods in the boxes on their forms too, but I just generalized it and put the amounts and made notes to SEE FORM 3299, because under other circumstances, you would have to pay a duty for the import, but 3299 makes it so its exempt.

[ionoone 19]

If you have a lot of stuff to move and/or furniture, you may want to consider hiring a moving company, such as AMJ Campbell (that's the one we will be using). You can request a quote on their website. 

 

They advised that they have "Ikea specialists", i.e. employees specialized in disassembling Ikea furniture for the move, and reassembling it at destination. 😂