The steps of a journey on non direct flights may be traced.

Small parcels air and envelopes may fly on non direct flights. Here is the tracking of an envelope that was accepted in Switzerland before going to Hungary as its final destination.

Before 2015 the steps of the journey before arrival or delivery were not reported online. These details are still not always available though.

Hoya, Hoya seeds and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com Find all Aleyagarden posts on http://aleyagarden-blog.blogspot.com

Repeat plant importers without permits and USDA priorities

Hello,
Thank you for your order of 36 Hoya plants
In the USA you can only import 12 plants without a permit, or we :
- send 3 parcels to 3 different addresses
- send 3 parcels over 3 weeks but this will take the attention of your customs...
Usually parcels under 13 plants to repeat USA plant importers are delayed by customs
Parcels with import permits are processed in priority. They can be downloaded online Please advise.

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

Find all Aleyagarden posts on http://aleyagarden-blog.blogspot.com

Canada, rooted plants, import permit missing, 34 day trip, 80% survival ?

It was a 34-days shipping starting on 21 Feb. by EMS for these Hoya plants, from Thailand to Canada returned on first April. The Canadian customs put a notice saying that the import permit was missing. Some plants were rooted : " MISSING IMPORT PERMIT AS REQUIRED FOR ROOTED PLANTS "

 The notice ( it is also sent to the importer ) mentions the declaration that must appear on the phytosanitary certificate in case of other imports.

The exporters greatly appreciate that the plant protection services inform importer and exporter in such practical ways.

Parcels should always be returned with a note giving the reason so that no doubt persists regarding obligations that were not matched on the buyer's side. ( registration prior import, collect at customs centre .. )

By the same token we could make a new test of longevity in stressing conditions : after these 34 days we could probably regrow 80 % of the content. However in an other parcel returned from Spain - no registration by the importer - a few days earlier 100 % of the plants were lost after a 1 month trip.

In some countries the customs may tolerate one ot two low value imports of plants without an import permit by small parcel air instead of EMS, but if you are unsure do not hesitate to make the permit or the registration online, this is usually quick and cheap.

Below : packed in the same bag Hoya thomsonii resisted damage in the 34-days-shipping but H. sigillatis dried out. Here is a list of Hoya that need faster shipping times or should be bought well developed and rooted, in large sizes.

Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

Find all Aleyagarden posts on http://aleyagarden-blog.blogspot.com

Travel took 38 days, 62% of the rooted plants will restart.

21 rooted plants were sent to Italy on 25 september, they were back in Thailand on 3 November; after 38 days of travel only 8 plants are dry;  13 can restart, that is 62%.

 38 days is a very long travel but the stems were thick and the temperature was low most of the time.

 

It was an EMS parcel; the Italian officer at the Ordinary service of the postal Customs reportedly said that the Phytosanitary certificate was missing. Although we emailed a scan of a paper copy and asked if we could send by envelope a second original ( this is the rule ) we were not answered. I don't think that the phytosanitary certificate was involuntarily lost.

Documents could be lost between offices but there may be a trick : if some documents are missing the importer is no more required to declare the goods at a remote customs center and the Postal officers spare the work of sending the parcel to the Phytosanitary for inspection. So the importer has the opportunity to avoid tax payment while on the postal agent's side less work is necessary. High value goods imported by EMS, or goods often imported to the same address may require customs clearance through ordinary procedure whereby the importer has to go to a Customs center and take the papers ( invoice and certificate ) from the parcel to make the declaration; or they can be represented by an agent who will declare in their name. The customs centers can be far from home.

With the more common pocedure named " simplified procedure " taxes can be paid instead to the postman on delivery. Most parcels with a value under 150 eur  and not often sent to the same address go through the simplified procedure. When importing plants, to some countries small parcels air with a value under 150 euro are safer regarding the possibility of " loss " of documents.

Importers who import plants often to the same address or high value / big parcels should not take the risk of not claiming the parcels at a customs center. Or an arrangement should be made with the exporter before departure so for instance unclaimed plants at customs would be resent.

Herbs and Spices, Hoya, Hoya seeds, Orchid seeds, Ferns, Fern spores are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

Why sometimes Phytosanitary documents are so prone to disappearance ?

The Phytosanitary documents are reported missing by the importer. Did they really disappear ?

The staff at the Customs service of the Post may indeed leave them unintentionally  ( or intentionally to alleviate work ? ) somewhere between customs and postal agent offices. But there is an other hypothesis :  the importer was told to come at a customs center to take themselves the documents from the box. This is because the usual simplified procedure ( taxes are paid at the door ) was not admitted by the customs and the Postal staff is not entitled to take the documents themselves. Hence instead of paying taxes ( an agent could do it for the importer far from the customs center but the cost would not make sense for small postal parcels ) the importer will report that the post said that the documents are missing. They were missing only in the sense that they were not taken from the parcel and presented by the importer.
Normally the non simplified procedure happens for EMS parcels with unusually high values or frequent imports of plants to the same address.

 

 

Herbs and Spices, Hoya, Hoya seeds, Orchid seeds, Ferns, Fern spores are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

Post offices offer Simplified procedure and Ordinary procedure for customs clearance

When we pay taxes on imported parcels at our place this is called the "simplified procedure". There is a second procedure called "ordinary procedure". In most EU countries when the value of the parcel is or seems to be above 150 eur, or when the plant importer has to register as a professional ( because of frequent imports of plants to the same address, or large parcel, or high value ), then the procedure

is called ordinary : with this " ordinary procedure " importers have to pay taxes at a customs center of the post ( it may be far ) either directly or by hiring an agent, indeed during an ordinary procedure the postal agents are not allowed to open the parcels and take the customs documents directly ( invoice and phytosanitary certificate ) : the importer or customs agent ( broker ) must do it and handover the documents to the post. http://www.correos.es/ss/Satellite/site/informacion_cliente-tramites_aduaneros-inicio/includeTemplate=COR_DetalleGuiasAyuda-sidioma=en_GB
Most " small parcel air " ( parcels up to 2000 gr ) are delivered by the simplified procedure , but EMS parcels that seem to be of 150 eur value are instead more likely to be delivered through the ordinary procedure. Dividing an import in several parcels is a good solution.

 Herbs and Spices, Hoya, Hoya seeds, Orchid seeds, Ferns, Fern spores are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com

Para importar semillas y plantas de vivero es necesario presentar una solicitud o una notificación

The buyer protection policy enforced by PayPal encourages people to import plants by shifting on the exporter the risk that their customs may intercept the package whenever the import is deemed a professional one ( for commercial propagation ) hence needed registration prior import in addition to the export documents ( phytosanitary certificate and CITES if endangered species ) sent by the exporter with the parcel.

In most cases the exporters of live plants cannot guess if the customs will consider the parcel as a professional one or not, except when rules are made public on the internet like in USA, or reported by hearsay such as those of Italy, where the number of plants ( 12 and 5 ) per week and per address are the limit before prior registration of the importer. ( however customs can see as an abuse the repetitive imports of legally correct numbers without prior registration and delay the clearance or find a sanitary pretext to justify an interception  ).
On the contrary in Spain * for instance ( and also probably in Russia ) there is no maximum number of plants and customs consider case by case the frequency and number of plants to determine if the import needed a registration prior import. Hence the post may request from the buyer Phytosanitary certificate AND Spanish authorization to clear at customs and say on the postal site that "documents are missing" if this latter Spanish authorization ( import permit ) is not provided by the buyer. But the buyers may argue in a Paypal claim for non received goods that they were requested a missing phytosanitary certificate;  when in fact what can be missing is any of the two documents. 
In a Paypal claim for non received item due to reported lack of phytosanitary certificate the senders can always prove that they made a phytosanitary certificate as they have copies.  If the buyers had done a registration, they should also present a copy of the document. Failure to provide such document when the exporter has a copy of the phytosanitary certificates should always rule in favor of the exporter.
Plants cannot be returned in their original state and a great part of the cost is production and administration for a stock maintenance : even if returned live, individual plants are discarded.
The rule that money and goods cannot be on the exporter's side should not apply with live plants for their export to be sustainable. At Aleyagarden we inform on the check out page where customers confirm their purchases that importers must know their import rules and practices and that live plants cannot be returned in their original state or cannot sustain a non as described claim with Paypal; we emphasize again this information in home page of aleyagarden.com, conditions of sale page, this BlogSpot, and Facebook page.

* Para importar semillas y plantas de vivero es necesario presentar una solicitud o una notificación
previa a la importación .. : http://www.asaja.com/files/horizontales/08072013134233_Manual%20importacin%20semillas%20y%20plantas.pdf