US ship pcb to international locations

[Luke51411]

I went to ship a pcb in a regular envelope to a forum member in europe and the USPS wanted $6.50!!! I know you can ship cheaper than that. I'm just not familiar with shipping internationally. How do you all ship to other countries from the US?

[culturejam]

If it's less than 1oz, you can just use an international letter stamp (or about $1.20 in other stamps) and a standard envelope. If you ship a parcel (including padded envelopes), it's going to cost $3-$4 at least.

[Luke51411]

Ok yeah it was just an envelope but they said it would need a customs form etc, I figured on $3-4 but not almost 7. I guess I just need to buy the postage separate and drop in the mail.

[juansolo]

I've taken to disguising PCB mails at greetings/get well/birthday cards as I had the same problem here once. Not had a problem since and it allows me to send some truly hideous and inappropriate cards to people as a bonus.

[alanp]

I use letter postage, and drop them into a post box, far away from shopkeepers who ask questions like "Why is this letter so stiff?" and "What's really in this?" and "Go and buy a courier bag, then fill out this customs form, first!"

[gtr2]

I went to ship a pcb in a regular envelope to a forum member in europe and the USPS wanted $6.50!!! I know you can ship cheaper than that. I'm just not familiar with shipping internationally. How do you all ship to other countries from the US?

Because they were charging you the package rate.  They should be charging you for a "Flat" if its under 3/4" thick.....and yes customs forms are required...always...

Josh

[Luke51411]

They said if it was anything other than a letter it would be that rate. They didn't give me an option for a flat

[gtr2]

Sadly most don't care...you need to gently inform them...

[aion]

My postal workers refuse to ship with flats. I even printed out the instructions from the USPS website on what constitutes a flat, but they made up something about how that doesn't apply for such and such, so it was a no-go. Another office will do it, but they have more restricted hours so I'm rarely able to get over there while they are open.

Anyway, I gave up and now I do it under cover of darkness... handwritten envelopes with stamps, no customs form, just dropped straight into the pickup box. They usually arrive much more quickly, 10 days overseas on average, and rarely get lost.

You can go up to 3.5 ounces as long as it's not more than 1/4" thick. I can stack PCBs two high plus a cardboard backing before I hit 1/4", so I'm able to do up to 8 PCBs in a single envelope. You just have to account for the non-machinable surcharge which is 20 cents extra. So $1.36 for 1 oz, $2.34 for 2 oz and $3.33 for 3 oz.

I have a local post office with a machine where I can print arbitrary stamp values, but before I found that, I would just order $1 and $2 stamps from usps.com and get as close as I could that way.

[gtr2]

Likely you need to use shipping software to do the flats and customs properly....which I've done for a few years now.  It's faster, meets the requirements, and you can at least track it until it gets out of the US.  I've been doing scan forms for batches recently.  The post office loves them since they scan one form for all the packages and they don't have to enter them each individually.

Josh