China's new policy of exporting tea?

[toby]

I get tea from Taobao quite a few times (from vendors with a legit/famous physical shop) and use a parcel forwarding agent (Dot Dot Buy) to send the tea to me in Australia from China by EMS.

Today, I applied to get some tea send to me as usual (you need to raise a request every time before you get the shop/friend to send stuff to them, and they will "approve" it and get you to fill it the courier's detaills).

Next thing I know they "rejected" my request and said "due to recent custom (china)'s policy", they might confiscate or send back (to senders) food-related parcels.

They said if I insist, I have to specify that I understand and take the risk.

Has anyone got problems with custom (when it was sending out of china)?

[debunix]

I just got an EMS package from Yunnan Sourcing last week, no fuss.

[Cwyn]

I would get myself another agent. Either this agent is having some trouble or something fishy is going on. What this message is saying is you might lose your money/goods and they won't be responsible. A reputable agent will either refuse to ship outright or refund the money if you don't get what you paid for.

[steanze]

I haven't heard of this. I have a package on the way with Yoybuy. It has worked pretty well so far, I will keep you posted on this shipment.

[mr mopu]

I get tea from Taobao quite a few times (from vendors with a legit/famous physical shop) and use a parcel forwarding agent (Dot Dot Buy) to send the tea to me in Australia from China by EMS.

Today, I applied to get some tea send to me as usual (you need to raise a request every time before you get the shop/friend to send stuff to them, and they will "approve" it and get you to fill it the courier's detaills).

Next thing I know they "rejected" my request and said "due to recent custom (china)'s policy", they might confiscate or send back (to senders) food-related parcels.

They said if I insist, I have to specify that I understand and take the risk.

Has anyone got problems with custom (when it was sending out of china)?

I may know a seller off eBay that will work with you. I have had them "source" tea for me and they also take paypal which protects you on your payment. I would just need an email address to forward to them .

[kyarazen]

I get tea from Taobao quite a few times (from vendors with a legit/famous physical shop) and use a parcel forwarding agent (Dot Dot Buy) to send the tea to me in Australia from China by EMS.

Today, I applied to get some tea send to me as usual (you need to raise a request every time before you get the shop/friend to send stuff to them, and they will "approve" it and get you to fill it the courier's detaills).

Next thing I know they "rejected" my request and said "due to recent custom (china)'s policy", they might confiscate or send back (to senders) food-related parcels.

They said if I insist, I have to specify that I understand and take the risk.

Has anyone got problems with custom (when it was sending out of china)?

perhaps you can switch to another buying service! good proxies have several routes for export, a route for regular items, a route for sensitive items etc etc.

buying services usually stop doing somethings because of one or two bad incidents, i.e. tea confiscated, recipient complaint fake tea, etc.

[toby]

Thank you all.

I talked to the customer service support person via live chat.
Basically, he/she said nothing has changed.

Someone on a tea forum in Hong Kong said custom of China are more strict recently with food product due to food safety issue.

Someone on another forum reported that his stuff was bounced back by custom and he had to pay to send it again.

I am happy with the shops that I order tea from but I am not too sure which parcel forwarder I could go with (I'm in Melbourne, Australia).


Yoybuy has lots of bad reviews.

[steanze]

I had a good experience with yoybuy so far, but maybe I have just been lucky.
They bought and sent me the exact items I ordered. They allowed me to bargain with the Taobao sellers and to let them know about the bargained price, then they contacted the sellers and bought the items at the bargained price. It was easy to find operators on chat, not all of them speak perfect English but good enough to understand and answer the questions with a bit of patience. Once my items were categorized as "imitation" so they wouldn't ship them with DHL, but when I contacted them pointing out that they were teapots and not clothes pretending to be of famous brands, they rapidly changed the categorization and allowed me to ship with DHL.
I have to say that I only ordered a couple of times with them, so I don't have the large amount of experience needed to do some statistics.

[wert]

This is nothing new. Tea has been a "sensitive" item for the chinese customs for many years. It is mainly a change of policy from the service.

[toby]

Cleared the custom! New tea sometimes next week!

[MEversbergII]

What did you get?

M.

[toby]

2006 Everlasting 99 Red Raw
2004 Everlasting Chang Tai Menghai Raw
2012 Bulang Ripe
2003 Pirvate Order Blue Mark Raw
2011 Dayi 92 raw brick
2015 HHC red ripe brick
2004 XG FT Nanzhou Golden Tip Tuo
2005 501 8582

[honza]

Nice selection !

[mr mopu]

2006 Everlasting 99 Red Raw
2004 Everlasting Chang Tai Menghai Raw
2012 Bulang Ripe
2003 Pirvate Order Blue Mark Raw
2011 Dayi 92 raw brick
2015 HHC red ripe brick
2004 XG FT Nanzhou Golden Tip Tuo
2005 501 8582

Any chance of getting a link for the seller of such a nice haul?