How To Safely Ship Cartridges For Retip

So I shipped them off today. Decided to use FED EX Air Super Saver. Threw $2K insurance on it so hopefully they know there is some care needed. To go across country it cost me $64 with my discount for having an account. Hopefully in a bit Steve will do his thing and I will have my cartridges back. No damage, just worn diamonds, so stock cantilevers will stay in place. 

The more important is a return shipping from your retipper :)

In my county you can’t insure a cartridge to whatever value you want, you must prove the real cost with real/valid documents. For example you can’t ship a $500 cartridge (or a piece of junk) with $5k insurance pretending you will get $5k if it’s lost :) 

For international shipping (not your case) insurance must be equal to declared value, so the import tax will be charged by custom, in Europe import tax is extremely high (can be over 20%) and it’s better to declare as low as possible without any insurance. 

Which is why I prefer a domestic option if possible. Whenever I have my Ikeda done it will have to go to Expert Stylus, and that will require me to follow those rules and take more risk than I would like to. 

At the moment I have one of these new generation AT OC9 cartridges installed. I have the XSH and XSL, with the XSH on the SOTA/SME V and I am quite impressed with how good this cartridge sounds. Significant improvement over the OC9 III in terms of tonal balance and low level resolution. I think this is the best cartridge I have heard at it's $650 price point. I could easily use this as my casual cartridge. I am very curious to hear the XSL, as I am thinking of installing it on the Dynavector arm. 

Expensive cartridges should always be insured. The cost are
modest. Track/trace is not insured. I lost 1300 euro this
way. Post. nl lost my packet and deed not made any excuse. 
Packets are delivered by cheap immigrant workers who don't
speak the language of the host country while the computer 
can't read each hand writing. 


 

@nandric What is the import tax in the Netherlands if you got an incoming parcel not from the EU ?

You will immediately pay import tax once your shipper declares the real value of the cartridge (for example if your EUR 1300 cartridge is insured to full value you will pay import tax from the full value, so you will pay at least 260 EURO tax which is 20% I believe).

The insurance will cost you not only the modest price of insurance itself, but in addition it will cost you 20% of the total value. Of course you do not pay import tax if you bought it from the EU, but if you bought it from the USA you will pay import tax and the reference for your custom control in declared value on your custom declaration. The import tax in the EU is extremely high in every country and in some countries they will summaries the cost of shipping and the cost of goods to change tax from the total.

If your parcel is not insured your custom has no idea of the real value and your shipment can declare $20 instead of $2000, so there is no tax at all.

In my country no one drops a parcel by the door like in the USA, I pick up my parcels from the post office myself and they are fully trackable.

So in my opinion insurance for international shipping is nonsense.
For domestic shipping insurance is a good option.