[ghshephard]

Surprisingly - clearing customs in many countries can be done by a random person who is willing to take a trip out to the airport and just pay brokerage and customs fees directly. I was in Jamaica and had some telecom gear fedexed to me - I went to pick it up but didn’t have the appropriate tax ID number to do so - I was able to head to downtown Kingston, provide my passport, they gave me a TRN (kind of like a SSN) and I went back to customs, paid the $20 or so and voila - I had the device clearing customs in the same day. I often wonder if it’s that straightforward in other countries. I do know if you hire a customs broker, in say Mexico (which fedex can’t clear customs for you - unlike say Germany) - the customs broker will end up charging you $1500 in fees to clear a $1300 NUC.

[jhugo]

It is that straightforward in most countries — I've done this exact thing many times. You save a lot of money, but you can sometimes waste a lot of time, and if your shipment is at all complicated you need quite a bit of specialist knowledge (which is why the brokers exist).