Providing buyers with your invoice when dropshipping

Hello everyone

I'm based in the US and I would like to do some drop shipping from China to the US. I've found some Chinese suppliers who will be happy drop shipping for me, however I'm facing an embarrassing situation. The drop shippers posted how much I pay on the front of the package for custom/import purpose. Say I charge my customers $15 and I pay $5 to the drop shipper and when my customers receive the package they will see $5 and that may confuse my customers, so what should I do?

Should I ask my drop shippers to report $15 instead of $5? This way my drop shipper knows how much I charge my customers.
If I let it as it is, my customers will know I pay $5 for the import and that will cause confusion as we mentioned above.
Do you think I can ask my foreign drop shippers NOT to mention the price and say it's a gift or sample instead? Not sure if it's a fraud.

What should I do? Let me know. Any advice helps.

Thanks again.


LH

Hi Lawrence and welcome to the forum,

Can you just confirm that your dropshipper is sending this package to you or to your customers direct?

To the customers direct. I understand that the situation can be solved if I ask the foreign drop shippers send the products to me first and I reship to my customers in the U.S., but then it will take longer and cost me double shipping.

I would suggest getting them to just declare the value at your sale price, that's the absolute easiest way around it if a Customs declaration is required.

Thank you so much. Will usually drop shippers be fine with that? Any other suggestions?

Yeah, they shouldn't have an issue with it and it's not like you're trying to under-value an item to avoid tax. You, or I should say, they are actually over valuing it. I honestly doubt many people would even look at the Customs declaration on a package to be honest, I know I never do lol, so I don't really think it's a big issue, but that's the easiest way around it.

The one thing you want to be always careful about is the supplier not stamping their own brand or address details on any packages.

Hi, I'm new to dropshipping, I realise that this thread is from 2016, hope someone is still attending to it.

I too have a problem with the information that are provided on the customs declaration (on the front of the parcel) by an overseas supplier. 

Customs requires the overseas supplier to declare the goods sold for export as 'merchandise' and the value declared should be the price that the recipient of the goods had paid for.

In a dropshipping transaction, the overseas supplier is the sender of the goods, the end consumer is the recipient of the goods, and I as a resller is just someone in between to faciliate the sale.  The price declared on the customs declaration should therefore be the price that my customer had paid me (rather than the price I paid to my overseas supplier). 

I discussed this problem with my overseas supplier, they said they can declare the goods as 'merchandise' but they cannot accomodate my request to declare the value of the goods as my sales price (i.e. the price that my customer, the recipient/importer of the goods had paid). 

I'm not asking them to undervalue the goods to avoid taxes, in fact, I'm asking them to do the opposite, to declare a correct value, so my customer (the recipient/importer of the goods) and I won't get into trouble with Customs. 

They said they can't help.  But I really wanna work with this supplier.  What can I do? 

The most frustrating thing is, when they are selling direct to end consumers (i.e. when they are not dropshipping), they declare the correct value! This shows that they clearly understand the importance of following customs requirements. 

Is this a common problem in dropshipping? Are most suppliers unwilling to comply with customs rules? If someone is reading this, how do you get around this problem? Please do share your thoughts......

Hope someone will read this thread and offer some advice. 

Thank you. 

Hi Sammy, got your PM so I will reply for you there :)

Hi Sammy, got your PM so I will reply for you there :)