Does anyone order from iHerb? Custom fees? (and other US vitamin/supplement shops)

Life Health & Fitness
161

Both times I’ve had shipments stopped, it’s been DHL shipments, and yes, an email was sent. On the off chance: make sure your iHerb account uses your “real” email; every few months I seem to discover one of my automatic log-ins is using an email address I stopped using years ago.

A lot of the below is just to help out others going through this.

My DHL shipment just arrived, and yes, I had to do the customs translation thing. My two most recent DHL packages have needed to go through this step (and it never happened before that), but fortunately this time nothing was tested. Timeline:

  • Order placed: January 27.
  • Order shipped: January 28.
  • Email received from DHL Taiwan for customs clearance: February 2.
  • My reply sent to them: February 2.
  • A follow-up email sent from me, because I’d heard nothing one way or the other: February 4; they replied to this one, and said confirmation would happen the following day, and they’d contact me if there were any problems.
  • Package received by my building front desk: February 9.

Package contents this time: Clif bars; jarred tomatillo salsa; jarred soup stock base; dry pasta; white chocolate bars. Basically I went with processed goods, since there seems to be more of a problem with grains and dry beans getting tested and then perhaps confiscated. In future I’ll probably order those with the air mail option.

Here’s the text of the email they sent me:
此票貨件海關查驗
委任書煩請簽名連同身分證正反面影本回傳
並確認來貨回覆
1.各項來貨中文品名
2.有無含藥性產品??
3.來貨為顆粒狀(請回覆顆粒數) OR 粉狀(請回覆淨重) ?

The email also included a DOC file that required my signature, my address, and a translation of all the products. I copy and pasted in a signature by simply taking a passport scan and cropping it down to just my signature, and then pasting that in - inelegant, but no less so than printing, signing, and faxing it.

For the first package that was stopped by customs, my wife did all the paperwork, but this time I didn’t want to bother her with it - in part because I think she cared too much about getting it done right! I went seriously chabuduo with this and just replied with (1) the edited DOC file with my cut-and-paste signature and a Google translated table of all the product names, in English and presumably quite terrible Chinese; (2) a scan of my passport; (3) a scan of my APRC. I don’t know what was actually required, but it worked, and DHL now probably has information about me for a fairly convincing identity theft scam.

It’s odd to me that the email exchange over the first held DHL package was with email addresses ending “seed.net.tw” (my wife handled all those), and this time it was with “dhl.com”.

162

So you didn’t put your chop on it? I’ll go chabuduo with the next one then, to save the bother of printing then scanning the address form.

163

Nope, no chop. Just a cut, paste, and very low resolution signature. I didn’t have to print or fax anything, to my pleasant surprise. I suspect one of my APRC or passport would also have been enough, but I sent both to be safe.

I wonder if Google Translate’s versions of the product names made any sense at all.

Oh yes, language of correspondence: their initial email was almost entirely in Chinese; the attached form to fill out had a mix of Chinese and Chinglish. I only wrote English, except for the product translation. Their reply to my “Is everything going well?” email was in comprehensible English. Note that, if you’re like me, you may have a habit of deleting or trashing any Chinese-only email on the assumption it’s spam, so be careful.

164

ordered me some supplements (under $100), shipping via UPS ($24), and it still worked out cheaper than purchasing it here…fingers crossed, hope it comes through!

165

parcel was shipped yesterday, but now stuck at UPS because of a missing invoice…iherb apparently leaves them out now.

got my parcel today (mar 2) with no extra charges!

166

I can confirm another example of International Airmail seeming to bypass the Customs ma-fan involved with DHL delivery. Ordered protein powder 2/25, arrived 3/10 without issue.

167

Right now, and for the next two days or so, iHerb has massive discounts on DHL shipping for orders over $40US. My shopping cart currently weighs 17 pounds (not finalized yet), and shipping charges are only going to be $8.

Now I just have to figure out what’s relatively safe to get through without prolonged testing.

168

And I’ve only just ordered … grrr. Will have to be a double-order then this month, can’t pass that up!

169

I’ve had another DHL shipment held by customs for paperwork - this time, the email and form letter to fill out were entirely in Chinese, while last time there was some English sprinkled in. I don’t think I ordered anything that qualifies as seeds, grains, medicines, or vitamins, but who knows what standard they’re going to use this week.

So that’s three out of my last three DHL shipments that have been held by customs, and then required paperwork. Both airmail shipments in that time have got through without an issue.

170

Same here. Totally jacked by customs. Email received with forms to fill (all in Chinese) and requests for specific details on the goods (Clif builder bars and Nuun rehydration tablets). Forms were completed and returned within an hour of getting them, which was yesterday at noon. As of now, nothing has changed and DHL says to wait for customs. The first time I had ordered with DHL, everything had arrived without a hitch. A right pain in the ass this is.

171

It is a pain, but I’m working on it being less of one. As someone said earlier, maybe lostinasia, I’m going minimal with the form and description this time around. I think it’s all a formality - they get the form with a sig, open the box, check-check-check then send it out. Just a frustrating step in what used to be a clean process.

172

On the timeline: last time I went through this, I received the package seven days after I got the first letter from customs or DHL or whoever it is. I replied within an hour, didn’t hear back from them, gave them a politely worded version of “WTF?!” two days later, and was told everything should be cleared the next day. There was no further communication, and the package arrived another five days later.

Today I got the first email, and replied within an hour, once again with a table with the English names on one side and the Google Translate pseudo-Chinese on the other side. To my surprise, they replied this evening, in English, to say that things are in progress and they’ll get back to me if there are any problems. (I now am idly wondering if I’m getting the grease for Captain Stag’s squeaky wheel.)

So yeah, North America to Taoyuan, three days. Taoyuan to Taipei, one week.

173

So things aren’t looking up. The last time I ordered from iHerb the value was under USD $50 so that had gone through without a hitch. This time, USD $79 and it’s a shit show. 2 days after submitting the documents they’ve asked for DHL tells me “custom needs to check your stuff ingredient regarding FDA rule. That’s why it takes so long this time. It was lucky you didn’t get this problem before. Also because food security problem in Taiwan now that’s why custom is more careful.”

The last bit makes no sense at all. The food ‘security’ issues are all within Taiwan and not coming from abroad (unless it’s related to Fukushima), or certainly not from what we buy from iHerb. Anyway, it’s now up to the ace customs inspectors who know what’s healthy for me or not (especially since most of it is organic, which might be too healthy). I’m getting a little hungry now, I think I’ll head to 7-11 to buy a Taiwan FDA approved instant noodle snack that is healthy for me.

174

Have they said that’s one of the reasons? The iHerb site continues to confuse me, with the line “Orders over $50 (or NT $3000) may be subject to tariff from 30% to 50% of the total price of the order.” Those amounts aren’t exactly equivalent. I’ve frequently ordered over $50, and never over $100, and I haven’t had to deal with a tariff yet (“just” all the stupid declaration issues).

Implicit in their final sentence: people aren’t buying Taiwanese products anymore because, yeah, we know, they’re toxic, but tough. You’re stuck with them.

175

They didn’t specify that as a reason but I remember reading earlier on in this thread something along those lines so I only ever ordered under 50$ until now. Never been imposed any tariff but I bet there will be some sort of duty on this shipment.

176

I have 2 boxes going thru customs right now: $75 & $80… will update …

177

For what it’s worth you can use DHL to track your package, although the information on what’s happening in Taiwan is a little nebulous.

In iHerb: go to My Account, and then Order History. Click on the tracking number.

But then what does the DHL information mean? As far as I can tell, once it’s in “TAIPEI-TAIWAN”, first, there’s “Arrived at Sort Facility TAIPEI-TAWIAN.” Then there’s “Clearance processing complete”, which, the first time at least, doesn’t seem to mean much. It then seems to go in a daily loop of “Clearance Event” in the early early morning, and then “Customs status updated” in the afternoon, with a few “Shipment on hold” notifications mixed in there. (That lasted for four or five days on my previous order.) For my previous DHL order, the second “Clearance processing complete” in Taiwan seems to be the escape from customs - I got the item a couple of days later. I’m hoping that’s the case anyway, because my current DHL order just had the second “Clearing processing complete” processed a couple of hours ago.

I had no idea there was an Ontario in California. The “ONTARIO, CA - USA” location initially raised this Canadian’s ire!

178

Just got my last package from Iherb and DHL this morning. Total for my products came out to $86 and change. I had to pay $10 for shipping. Got charged 916nt because shipping was included in my total cost calculated by customs. At $96 I was over by like 20nt and at $86 I was under by almost 300. No more DHL and no more Iherb.

179

The unhappy situation you encountered is not iherb’s fault. Clearly Taiwan customs has changed their (previously free) way of (not) doing things.

If you do stick to it, try regular airmail next time. I have yet to be dinged using this shipping method. [fingers crossed for the future too!]

Guy

180

Bunch of interfering #)##s. Multiple food scandals all over the place and they’re busy ripping opening packets of organic flax seeds and sticking extra charges on them.