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Which Customs is near me?
 

If I buy something out of country.. which customs office would it process at? I'm at Las Vegas. Also would it be high sizer rate?

Higher sizer rate?
I'm thinking that you might mean higher seizure rate?

I recently chatted with a seller on DHGate who said that they had been experiencing a lot of seizures going through the Chicago customs office of packages over 3kg, which is right about the the borderline of anything that I have ever gotten from them.
Got me to thinking. If you order from DHGate and your package is seized and you paid for it through Paypal, can't you just file an "Item not Received" case?
How about if you buy with a CC? Are you protected by having the ability to do a charge back?

I'm in Vegas. Los Angeles (DHL) and San Fransisco (EMS) are some of the worst at getting seized. My last two DHL shipments of 21+ kg were seized. Also, some orders through EMS have been seized several months ago. The smaller the package, generally, better the luck of getting it through. If I ever ship through EMS again, I will tell seller to ship through N.Y.customs as I have not had seizures through there yet. Just have them change zip code to east coast.

So if you live in Illinois and put a New York zip code on it you will get the package?
Wouldn't that in and of itself be a red flag

It shouldn't raise a red flag. Never had a problem. For example (not my real zip code) I have 89072. My seller would only switch the 9 and 0 to make it 80972. It would then come through NY customs. It then gets sent out to some undeliverable address on East coast before getting rerouted over to here is Vegas.

isn't there a good chance the package would get lost that way? And they would take my package for being 3kg? damn :(

If my area code is 8903X(x being a random number" What should I change the zip code to, to have it shipped to new york then back to las vegas?

Also is it a big chance of it getting lost because of that?

As I mentioned above I chatted with a DHGate seller who suggested that I send to another address that wouldn't route through Chicago. The problem is that if I transpose the first 2 digits, which seems to be the most plausible, it will still route through Chicago.
You would think that with Chinatown in NYC probably being the counterfeit capital of the western world that it would be hard getting things through customs there

If I change the first 2 digits... How would it get to vegas?

I think the zip is mainly for the first level of sorting and eventually it gets down to the street address and the city, which has to trump the zip code.
I have been sending rebates to my sister's house for quite some time and didn't know until recently that I had been using the wrong zip code for years

There's no hard and fast rule. As a matter of speedy delivery items do tend to go thro' a hub close to the final destination. It's no guarantee that will happen.

You need to discuss the most successful way to import with your seller. A seller well used to export to the US will be aware of the (better) methods.

Cant say I agree with the (repeated) transposition of a zip code. Why? It might lead to the loss of the parcel. Somewhere, sometime address discrepancies might be flagged. It's not even sensible from a business point. What use is a parcel lost in transit? :pop2: These comments are pertinent to importation only. I'm making no comments about domestic traffic :ranger:

Ok thanks guys.