Omniva Resumes Gift Deliveries to the USA, Other Shipments to Follow in Coming Weeks

Starting from October 21, Omniva’s private customer self-service is reopened for shipping gifts valued up to 100 USD to the United States. Gifts are non-commercial items sent free of charge from one individual to another. Registration for all other parcels to the USA will be restored in the private customer self-service by October 31, and in business customer self-service by November 10.  

“This means that from now on, customers can send parcels to the USA via Omniva, provided the shipment is a gift valued under 100 US dollars. We can now guarantee proper customs declaration of the gift, and timely delivery,” said Sven Kukemelk, Acting Commercial Director of Omniva. 

Omniva, along with other European parcel companies, suspended deliveries to the USA at the end of August when a new requirement came into force, mandating the declaration and payment of customs duties even on low-value shipments. Unfortunately, at the time the law took effect, the necessary implementing acts — the procedures for declaring shipments and transferring customs duties to the US — were not yet in place. 

Now that these implementing acts have been established, Omniva is adopting a virtual automated customs broker to comply with the new US customs regulations. “Simply put, this is a program that calculates the customs duty amount, declares the parcel, and forwards the payment to US Customs. Omniva will use the same broker as major European postal organizations such as Royal Mail, Postnord, and Ukrposhta,” Kukemelk explained. 

The delivery of gifts valued under 100 dollars will be restored first, as these parcels must be declared via the customs broker but are tax-exempt and therefore not subject to customs duties. 

Setting up the customs duty collection module will take a bit more time. “We are currently integrating the module into our systems and plan to restore the delivery of taxable parcels for private customers by the end of October, and for business customers by the 10th of November. We will inform our customers as soon as these services are restored,” Kukemelk confirmed. 

In the future, for taxable shipments, customers will need to pay customs duties and service fees at the time of parcel registration. The total amount depends on the parcel’s contents — the product, its country of origin, and its price. “Customs duty is a percentage of the shipment’s value, and the percentage varies by country and product category. For instance, goods produced in Vietnam are subject to significantly higher customs rates than those made within the European Union. Therefore, it’s difficult to generalize how much the cost of sending a parcel to the USA will increase,” Kukemelk added.