LebGeeks

Gromov

Member

New member introduction

Hi guys,

A French Lebanese guy here. I moved back to Lebanon 3 months ago after spending 8 yeas in France. I found this forum while trying to understand how to calculate custom fees of some products that i bought from china.  I used to buy everything online in France, specially Xiaomi products. Here the situation is different. Last time I bought a 40 dollars android box from Ali-express (+15 dollars for DHL delivery)
At the door, the DHL guy asked for 25 dollars !!!. Anyway I just wanted to thank for all the tips for importing products.

LifeEngineer

Member

Re: New member introduction

Hey man and welcome here!
I always order Xiaomi devices on AliExpress! Just make sure to chose "Free shipping" items or items with regular shipping with small cost (<10$). I recommend Singapore post or even China post. AliExpress standard shipping is usually the slowest!
DHL or other express shipping are expensive and people can easily rob you, like that additional 25$ you mentioned.
My orders take between 1 and 2 months which is a lot of time, but i'm rarely in urgent need of anything, so i'm fine!

Last edited by LifeEngineer (December 2 2016)

Gromov

Member

Re: New member introduction

Thank you for your reply. I am ordering everything with free shipping now but waiting sucks. I have a lot of gifts to buy for Christmas. I decided to travel to France to buy them. It is a lot cheaper there. I will save around 900 dollars (after deducing the price of plane ticket !)

Draguen

Member

Re: New member introduction

Hey,
as a French, go to the ambassy and declare yourself as living abroad (in Lebanon).  They will give you a card that mentions that you're an expat and as such, whenever you buy an item in france, you can reclaim the VAT at the airport (if you have the ticket and the card given to by the  ambassy  and all).
As the vat is 20% in France, it's non negligible.

When arriving in Lebanon,  you should declare the items to the lebanese "douanes" in order to pay the Lebanese VAT, but let's just say that it doesn't usually happen.

Last edited by Draguen (December 2 2016)

Totoro

Member

Re: New member introduction

Canadian-Lebanese here, used to order everything home, even car parts lol.

Decided to go out and actually buy things in person here for several reasons, the major reasons are: Trust, expensive AF, I love traffic.

Gromov

Member

Re: New member introduction

@Draguen: thank you for the great tip. @Totoro: I spent more than 1 hour in traffic today. Hope one day we will have a metro station.