Shipping things (surfboard) to TW

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
1

Hello everyone.
so, Moving to TW w the fam this june and seeing the carrying of eight suitcases plus onboard luggage and my 2 and 4yr old daughters like too much of a hassle.
any recommendations on shipping stuff from US to TW?
(i searched the threads, but everything is ten years old)
i ask about a surfboard just for size comparison. my longboard is really only 40" long. but def wont fit in my suitcase or a normal sized box.
i know my friend sent a VERY heavy box (somehow, weight did not matter) from mainland CN to the US for about $100 last year with his baby stuff on a 10day.
so I assume a three week delivery would be even cheaper.
we can take everything we NEED in two-three suitcases, but, motorcycle helmets, my wife’s sewing machine, etc, are all very bulky and I would rather ship them.
(this would also help taking the HSR from TPE to Tainan, as doing so w/ eight suitcases and two little girls would not only be very difficult, but also probaby incur extra fees

thanks all.
i do have a friend in kaohsiung i could maybe ship stuff to, so, if a port ship is cheaper (i know they tend to be) it may be worht the 40min bus ride to go pick the stuff up. my NCKU classes summer classes dont start until june 24th anyways, so I would have time

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I know you’re coming over for class, so there’s no company to help you pay for moving fees. I would suggest leaving those things over there and picking it up here in Taiwan. 9/10 the same exact item, like your surf board, will be much more expensive than back at home. But it would save you the time. That’s just how it is with shipping things over to Taiwan.

I’m not sure where you heard that shipping things via container are cheaper, but shipping anything via a container where you cannot fill the container, is not cheap. You can split a container with others, but you would need a fair amount people with a lot of stuff to split even the smallest container that’s 20 feet long.

If you have to have it, I would consider asking the airline what the fees are for extra large baggage. I know EVA AIR may not charge you for oversized baggage as long as it’s 1/2 of your allowed checked in bags.

http://www.evaair.com/en-global/managing-your-trip/other-information/excess-baggage-other-optional-fees/excess-baggage/#

3

Hmmm. Thanks.
I’m flying with Delta and China air. So in theory, we get 8bags and 4 on board.
I can take apart my Longboards and wrap them up and maybe have it count as one piece…

And I saw old posts on this forum about $500 container delivered from CA to TPE
Thanks for the thoughts

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It’s not cheap to ship household goods from the US to Taiwan.

I moved house here last summer from the US. I brought over only things that I knew I wouldn’t be able to find here but were also things that I could not live without comfortably (hiking pants, jeans, shorts, shirts, Olukai shoes, personal effects, and 2 very good kitchen knives: one a Shun santoku, the other a Henckels chef knife I’d owned for 20 years, plus knife sharpeners for each, etc.).

Bought a large wardrobe box from Home Depot and filled it with my stuff. Packed bubble wrap into the open areas, which was probably >50% of the box. Even so it weighed in at 81lbs.

Wasn’t able to use UPS. FedEx was attrociously expensive, like US$8,000 or more to ship this one box. Finally settled on DHL Used their export listing software to virtually identify all items in the box for customs purposes. Huge hassle, took forever (probably took 8 hours to go through DHL’s software). I noticed that the knives would tack on an extra US$600, so I decided to be sneaky and leave them off the list. If customs wanted to charge me for them, I thought, then let them find them. Big mistake.

Shipping charges for this one box was about US$1,400. Customs charge was about US$600 (would have been US$1,200 if I had listed the knives on the bill of lading). Import duty was about US$150. Total was around US$2,200. Paid online, wrapped the box up tight. DHL came by and picked it up about a week before I left for Taiwan.

Good thing I shipped it early, too. Couple days later got a phone call from DHL. Didn’t recognize the number so I let the call go to voicemail: Big mistake #2. The box was in Richmond, VA, being readied for container. DHL had found 2 knives and they are strictly verboten (even if I had elected to pay the $600 extra, it wouldn’t have mattered according to DHL. Yes, DHL is a bit of a mess and their software is extremely confusing to use). DHL could just throw away the knives, did I want them to do that for me? Only alternative was to send the box back to my house.

Immediately called the vm number, it goes to a call center. Can’t get ahold of the person who left the vm, and as it turns out who is actually looking at the contents of my box. Huge error missing that phone call, as what happens next is a Kafka-esque nightmare.

So the call center can’t reach my shipping lady (vm was from a female), but they put me in touch with her supervisor. I ask them to just throw away the knives, or better yet take them home since they are excellent knives. Whatever, I don’t want them and please remove them from the box, thank you very much. Supervisor says ok, no problem. We’ll remove them from the box. Check back in the next few hours and you should see your shipment status change from Being Returned to Customer to Shipped. I stay up late and sure enough, status changes to Shipped. Whew; I can sleep.

Next morning another email: my box has status Being Returned to Customer. I’m wtf?! I call them back, go through the call center routine once again and after an hour the status is changed to Shipped.

I check back later in the afternoon and status is Being Returned to Customer. At this point my flight is leaving in just a few days and I’m feeling a little panicky. To make a very long story short(er), I spend the rest of the day and most of the night (until 3am next day) on the phone with DHL. Problem was the supervisor’s supervisor refused to allow his people to change the contents of a customer’s box for legal liability reasons - pretty understandable really. Finally I get ahold of a dogged CSR who puts me in touch with the original lady from vm#1. The shipper confirms she has removed the knives. The CSR confirms the status is Shipped and will not change.

It works. Two weeks after arriving, I get a phone call from my front desk: I have a large box waiting downstairs, please come down and pick it up. I do, but first I had to pay an additional NT$1,359 in additional custom duty tax.

Bit of a nightmare. My advice is don’t cheat. Best of luck.

4 Likes
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I used https://www.sevenseasworldwide.com/ when moving to Taiwan and it went fine :slight_smile: You can get an instant quote on their site for either door-to-door or port-to-port service. How long it takes depends on the shipping schedule, but expect a couple of months.

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You spent over $2200 shipping one box? That’s crazy!!
I spoke to this company a while back and if you get the boxes to them in California, I believe they charge around $100 a box depending on size and weight.
http://www.luckyshipping.com/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=lists&catid=32

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I did. I also shipped a similar box over from the US to Taiwan in 2003, and it was similar in price. Both times DHL was by far the least expensive option. UPS won’t ship unless you have a business account and can use it to make a personal shipment. FedEx was about 4x more expensive than DHL.

By the way, “getting the box(es) to California” isn’t exactly cheap, either. Not from the East Coast.

It’s actually a bit worse this time. I also had a very large suitcase carrying some toiletries (probably didn’t need to bring those), some shoes, and some other personal items. On the flight out the Delta desk guy weighed it, raised his eyebrows and said, “Wow, I hate to charge you US100 for this suitcase, but that’s the price I see here. You sure you wouldn’t like remove some stuff and let me re-weigh it?” “You have no idea what it costs to get stuff there,” I chuckled. “A hundred bucks is no problem.”

Not cheap moving house to Taiwan, although it may be cheaper if you’re moving from California or Hawaii.

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Ive heard of lucky. Tw owned outfit out of NYC. Recommended. Y several.
I was on the seven seas website and did not find anything attractive. Maybe it’s just expensive. Sigh.
Yeah. I have a Henkel and was looking to get another good chef’s knife off eBay b4 I fly over. Def taking in my luggage.

9

I may have been able to take my knives in my checked luggage. Seemed to be fine with TSA. Problem was that the long leg of my flight was DFW>Narita. I knew that I wouldn’t have to clear customs in Narita, but I was worried that my luggage might be scanned there anyway.

Evidently knives are a deal-killer in Japan: in researching online I had read that an American’s piece of luggage containing a kitchen knife, in attempting to clearing customs in Tokyo, had resulted in his being sentenced to prison in Japan. For like 10 years.

Not being exactly sure what my checked luggage would be put through in Japan, I elected to hide the knives in my DHL box and hope for the best. Didn’t work.

Best of luck.

ETA: I had timed my DFW arrival so that during the layover I could sit for my Global Entry interview at the airport in Dallas (which I pulled off). Part of my problem was that my packing revolved around my flight to Taiwan, instead of the other way around. If I had been able to avoid Japan then I might have my kitchen knives with me here in Hsinchu. Still expensive to ship here, though.