Possible Hope for Australians

[brendo20]

I haven't been able to get any snus for a few months now, due to a major customs tax charge on my last order.
Unfortunately, my friends smoke more these days and I was led into the burning habit of disease once more, i've been chuffing down the menthol rolling tobacco and it's not treating me well.
So, out of frustration, I looked up Northerner.com and disovered, when I was about to process my order, a message telling me that "Due to HIGH customs charges in Australia, we recommend you order 5 cans or less at a time and select first priority mail. However, we cannot gaurentee you will not be charged by customs."
Previously I was ordering in 6 can lots.
This has given me some hope. I put through an order of 5 cans of loose, now I wait with baited breath...

[pico]

I hope for the best for you aswell, but realistically I don't think the packages are going to reliable pass through customs unchecked, no matter how many cans you order.

I've had orders of 2 cans get stopped (trying to see if they would pass through). Even my icetool package (thats all that was in the package, from northener) was stopped and opened by customs, they just sent it on though.

I think we just have to pay the extortionate rates if we want to use snus. Although it is ridiculously expensive, for the time being im going to continue, trying to cut down on use.

I also tried some rolling tobacco again, smoking is just crude now. If only smokers could stop for a week or two and find how disgusting it really tastes/is, they would probably successfully quit

[The Cook]

Re: Possible Hope for Australians

Brendo20, please keep us informed of your success or despair in bringing in snus to Australia. We have a similar tax scheme in Canada, but I've never been caught in it, I keep my orders small, fro 5 to 8 tins at a time. My snus comes as a First Class letter, so maybe the customs people are less inclined to examine my package. Check the "Holy Tax and Duty" thread for some discussion on Canadian taxes and duty. My last post is the actual amounts payable in the province of Ontario (where I live).

Good luck and happy snussing...

[Craig de Tering]

If it's any consolation: think of the money you'll save compared to chemotherapy or a lung transplant.
Big taxes on snus SUCK!!

[brendo20]

Somewhere there is a god...

Three cans of my 5 can order came through... No problems. The other 2 cans that were out of stock will come shortly... And hopefully without problems.

Happily re-united with the best addiction in the world.

Happily smoke free.... And loving it.

[brendo20]

By the way I forgot to mention... Tasmania's newspaper 'The Mercury' featured a small article on smokeless tobacco. One of our local tobacconists seems interested in retailing the stuff in a bid to attract pub-goers nearly two years after the smoking bans came in. I wish the guy luck... Here is the link.

link

[Zero]

^ I trimmed your link, mate, as it was huge and stretching the page, but it seems it links to a membership service anyway? Any link to the direct story?

[brendo20]

Sorry, even the newstext was hard to find. Eventually I may have enough time on my hands to scan the article and post it.

I've been having fun with customs.
Notherner screwed up my order, sending me two cans of Diplomat instead Gustavus which I asked for. It was sent in two parts. The first parcel came through with three tins. A week later, after getting an email from Notherner saying the Roots that I ordered had been shipped, two letters came from customs which consisted of two identical tickets telling me to phone them.
So I called them this morning. A man with a speech impediment who was frightfully hard to understand to be taking telephone calls, answered the phone and after 5 minutes of backround chitchat while I was on hold, eventually told me that to pay by credit card I had to email or fax through a photocopy of my driver's licence and my credit card number with a signiture to prove it. He said he would get Aus Post to weigh up the remaining package (I said nothing about the previous one) and then get back to me.
Four hours later I phoned, and the girl said "You're the guy with one can of snuff? We let it go."
I said "Sorry but different people tell me different things and I have no idea of the clearance protocol here."
She said "Well the thing is with tobacco, it has to be charged but we are snowed under with work and chasing up small amounts holds us up further so this time we let it go."
I said "Thank you very much."

So my advice to fellow strugglers: Befriend a customs employee. Wine them. Dine them. Send them something nice for the kids occasionally.
If only it were so easy...

[Braindead]

Wow, and I thought we had a hard time here in Germany...a friend just brought in 15 cans from his vacation without any problems. And I think I could order many rolls online without a problem. I can't buy it in shop, which makes me angry from time to time, but the situation you have in Canada and Australia sounds like a horror scenario to me! You definitely have my sympathy!

[richardmark]

customs experiance

With regard to the Aussie problems I watch "nothing to Declare" a programme about Aussie customes border control and they certainly seem to be on the ball, for once and I mean for once it looks like it's better being in the UK well for this instance only, Snus/Snuff in the UK is exempt from tobacco tax so its never stopped this is why nasal snuff is cheap here, even when I used to order snuff from the U.S it was never stopped as the customs declaration for it stated snuff.they can only do you if you buy from outside the EU and if the amount is over £80 then they charge you inport duty of around 12% with 17.5% VAT but it seems to depend on who inspects the package. They have even delivered parcels before with duty payable stamped to the package without collecting.

[Dave***t]

Snus exempt from tax in the UK? Hardly - it's illegal!

[chainsnuser]

Snus exempt from tax in the UK? Hardly - it's illegal!

Illegal? It's only banned for local sale, also in the UK, I guess!? Like a foreign delicacy, that doesn't fully conform with the national food-laws, not like an illegal drug (though some anti-tobacco-freaks surely would like to have it that way).

Well, in Germany, when snus was still 'legal', it was not taxed, because it was a niche-product (most likely due to heavy mouth-cancer-bogus-propaganda by our local health-psychopaths). The tax-revenues would have been too low to justify the administrative costs of a taxation.

Nowadays, it still isn't taxed, because the disposal takes place in Sweden. We only have to pay the Swedish tobacco-tax and VAT.

BTW, Nasal snuff and chewing tobacco are still freely available and also free of tobacco-tax in Germany.

Cheers!

[richardmark]

error in wording

Sorry I mean't nasal snuff not snus