Case Studies The Postal Organization

The Postal Organization

Our client is one of the world’s largest postal organizations. With the advent of email, their traditional mail operations have suffered. In its place, international commercial mail has become one of its fastest growing and most profitable business areas. During a typical year, our client’s customers will use its electronic shipping tools to generate more than 30 million international postal declarations for customs.

Even though these declaration forms contain fields for HS codes, our client was not able to provide HS classification assistance. Consequently, few of its customers included them. This caused a large percentage of its customer’s shipments to be opened by customs officers at the destination and to be detained until the contents were classified and duties assessed. Typically, such cases resulted in delays of several days. However, it was not unusual for shipments to be held by customs for several weeks in some countries.

What’s more, the lack of an HS code on postal customs declarations contributed to an upsurge in refusals and returns. Since, HS classification is the first step in determining a product’s landed cost; its absence meant that recipients were often subject to extra fees. When presented with a demand for payment for these unforeseen customs charges, many recipients simply refused to accept delivery of their shipments. Such returns added cost to, and eroded confidence in our client’s services.

With 3CE, our client is providing its customers with an easy, intuitive way to determine correct HS codes for their commercial shipments. Commercial mailers are now able to determine their landed costs more accurately and prior to export, which has resulted in a reduction of refusals and returns. Most importantly, has streamlined the customs clearance process, shaving days (sometimes weeks) off the delivery cycle. Finally, 3CE has paved the way for the development of a postal pre-payment system, which would completely eliminate any unforeseen and unwelcome charges.