Postal rates within Canada and from Canada to the United States have been bumpy over the past few years but have now settled down and are quite reasonable. A year ago, there was a great deal of concern when the United States eliminated the $800 de minimus duty exemption clause. However, the duties on used books remained very low and for the most part are duty free.
However, overseas postal rates and issues are a whole different story!
Implemented during the COVID years, the increases in overseas postage rates were extremely onerous and they have not come back down. I recently sent a package of two books to Britain, and it cost $130 – more than triple the cost of sending them to the United States. A month earlier we received an order from Poland for a $60 art book, and the postage would have been $130. That doesn’t work.
Interestingly, within Canada and the U.S., the incremental cost of sending a package with tracking is minimal. Not so for overseas packages – the cost is almost double, but the anxiety associated with sending a book without tracking is just not worth it.
At the moment, the high cost of sending a package to an EU country is not an issue because Canada Post has ceased sending packages there! Unbelievable!
On June 24, 2026, we received a notice from Abebooks that started with the following sentence – “Effective July 1, 2026, the European Union (EU) is removing the duty-free exemption for low-value imports. For items imported into the EU from outside the EU in a shipment with a value of €150 or less, a €3 customs duty will apply per item/tariff line in the customs declaration.”
Then two days later, the following update – “These orders must ship Delivered Duty Paid (DDP) with tracking.” The problem is that Abebooks will not handle the collection and reporting of the duty. That is the responsibility of the shipper. So later that day, I dropped into the local Post Office and asked if they were aware of this change – Nope!
After stewing about this over Canada Day, I decided that I would just send packages as I always have and if they want to collect duty then they can collect it from the recipient. We don’t use Abebooks generated labels but rather our own Raven & Gryphon Fine Books labels. Nobody told us about this change.
After Canada Day, I went in to mail off that package to Britain – the postal clerk went over to check a piece of paper, returned and started to enter the postage detail. I asked about the paper that was checked and this is when I found out that Canada Post has suspended shipments to the EU. Thank Goodness Britain dropped out of the EU!
So, my plan of shipping anyway, via Canada Post, ended.
Doing some on-line research, the EU implemented the change “to stop non-EU sellers from gaining an unfair advantage over local European businesses.”. Personally, I think they did it in response to the United States revoking de minimis.
But my research did discover that Poland, Latvia and Sweden will accept non-duty paid packages and simply collect from the recipient – my thoughts exactly! Canada Post will ship to those three EU countries.
Canada Post uses the word “temporary”. But they are dealing with the EU bureaucrats who are world champions.
I told my son, Gregory, who lives in Austria that we will not be sending a Christmas package as we did last year – sorry. I guess we will have to buy something through Amazon Austria. Maybe Amazon is behind this whole mess!!! Easier to deal with the EU bureaucrats.