Small story: I wanted to buy microscope parts off of someone on gchange. (This would be a small and lightweight package.) But shipping to the US from Belgium costs him 100 euros. Don’t think there’s anything going on between the US and Belgium.
Is this normal?
I ordered stuff from professional resellers from the US in the past and it was rather around $30-40 to ship to France. The price may depend on the transporter and some details about the service, but $100 seems excessive. Yet not impossible nowadays, since cargo prices have sky-rocketed! The best way to challenge this price is to propose a cheaper transporter…
Since China → Europe is very cheap (China → USA too I suppose), is USA → China → Belgium possible? (but then you have a probability 3/4 to have your package destroyed or lost, and the carbon footprint is relatively huge)
Just as an update, Belgium seems to be in the list of countries the USPS can’t accept international packages from. No idea if COVID is especially bad in Europe. My first guess is that a Belgian can send to another European country that’s not on a list, so the package gets sent from there. In doing so, the shipping cost increases?