I recently put up an item for sale on eBay. I've got a person interested in buying the item but their located in Brazil. My question is... how much of a pain is it to ship through customs? Any tips, advice or suggestions?
I don't see how customs is your concern. Fill out the forms, submit the invoices with docs and don't worry about it. Customs is the customer's problem in this case.
It can be a headace..You have to go down to the post office and fill out a customs form. Some countries don’t allow certain things. Like a country that makes piano keys might have that on their list of banned imports. I sold knives on ebay for a while and there were few countries that banned importation on knives. So if you sell something and it gets seized by customs the buyer might come back on you for his money back. A lot of people have a disclaimer like “not responsible for foreign orders that get seized by customs†I remember a few years back a guy from Canada sold a wall mount moose head that was 20 years old on ebay. Some guy from the U.S, won it so he sent it off. The customs opened it and went and arrested the guy who sent it for some international law on sending animal parts a crossed a international border (or something like that). So the guy was facing like 30 years in prison. I would go down to the post office and ask for the forms and they should give you advice on it.
You can do all the customs forms online at usps.com. It's no big deal. We ship all over the world, everyday. Unless you are shipping weapons or chemicals, or something of that sort its really a non-issue.