I’m almost done but sadly I’m going to be delayed a day!! 
Stuff has just been a lot lately!
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I sent today and messaged the tracking number to my partner and the organizer. I also received my swap package, and pics are in the gallery.
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Got mine out!
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Lol I ended up sending it out on time after all! But I forgot to take pictures. 
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My partner let me know they were sending late and I wasn’t feeling too well yesterday, so I rested instead of finishing. But hopefully I’ll be able to send out soon. I need to find out the final weight asap because I have a perfect small extra in mind that may or may not fit in with the weight limit.
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I took a few days to mail unfortunately, even though I was already nearly done on Sunday. But this meant I did have time to wrap things up and also to include a few sticky notes! My swap partner will know what I mean when they receive it.
I had a lot of fun working on this swap and I learned some new skills. Now, off to the gallery to see what you guys made!
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Thanks for understanding @Immaculata ! With both of our packages on the road now, I’m suddenly impatient for them to get there. 
I can’t wait for the gallery to fill up!
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I checked on my package, and it doesn’t look like mine has moved since the 11th. 
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I received a fabulous package! Off to post in the gallery
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I think my swap package will arrive soon! It arrived in Europe a few days ago and yesterday morning they e-mailed me to say I had to pay over €20 in tariffs. I called them and talked to customer services, who passed it on to a different department. After a few, quite strange, emails back and forth, they now agree that in fact I don’t have to pay tariffs and it will arrive in a few days.
I’m not sure if the lady on the phone was allowed to tell me, but she basically said “yeah we send tariff invoices to everyone, and we can always remove them if people complain”. I get that the rules around import taxes changing and increasing on both side of the Atlantic at the same time must be a big hassle for international parcel shipping companies. Rules are changing all the time, they have to adapt their computer systems all the time, the volume of mail they process every day must be gigantic. On the other hand, these days the sender has to disclose in detail what’s in the package, and they tick a box to say it’s a gift rather than a commercial shipment. As a gift from one private individual to another, swap packages are exempt, and just sending an invoice to everyone who receives a gift also doesn’t really seem right. A lot of people won’t know the rules or don’t know they can complain. The tariffs on the invoice were only €8 and the handling fee for the shipping company over €12, so it does sort of feel there’s an incentive for them to slap tarrifs on everyone.
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Oh gosh, I was worried you’d be charged tariffs! I did as much research as I could through the shipping website and it was almost saying “we cannot even guess when tariffs apply, so just know that they may”. I’m glad you were able to talk them out of it.
It does seem inappropriate that they’re effectively a tax on those who aren’t paying attention or brave enough to call? I know it has been difficult for a while but politics in the US are certainly not helping. I work at a wildlife conservation nonprofit and plenty of folks try to order merch internationally and it just comes back because they don’t want to pay the tariffs, after already paying the pricy shipping.
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These days every time I sign up for a swap, I make sure to check beforehand if any rules have been changed, they do change things a lot. These days I know where to look on the customs website, I even sent the link in the e-mail when I complained.
The EU has new rules since July that make it super expensive to order supplies from abroad, so I can no longer do that, but there is still an exception for gifts with a commercial value less than €45. That recently got my sibling in trouble when they received a gift for their baby that was bought in a shop and had the price tag still on.
Out of an abundance of caution, I wrote a long description on your swap package. Something along the lines of “handmade personal gift” so hopefully it’s clear for everyone it’s not commercial. I always put a very low value on it, too, because except for any purchased extras, I feel that our swap packages have no real commercial value (or - priceless, like the mastercard commercial). But indeed, if you sent me some merch from your work, I would have had to pay over €20 on top of what they already charged me, I understand why people refuse those deliveries. The “big guys” like Amazon include any tariffs in their final sales price but that’s just not do-able for smaller vendors. They can’t even keep up with the rules, let alone afford to take the risk of having to eat the cost if the calculation is wrong.
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Aarghh they came to deliver your swap package today, but I had to pay first. I refused and they took it back, so I emailed UPS customer services again and they had forgotten to actually cancel the invoice. They have promised they’re going to do that and try to deliver it again, and not send my swap package back to the US…
So, let’s see what happens next! I have to say this is the fastest a swap package from across the Atlantic has ever reached my house, even though it didn’t actually make it inside. The deliveryperson was clearly not interested in discussing this with us, he took off rightaway when we said the invoice was a mistake.
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