Thanks to everyone for you help.
I think I will avoid Hancocks even though I found some lovely fabric there.
General thought (from a 4x4 forum) is that unless I spend over $2000 it will not attract any import duties.
.....off to shop.....
Dee in Oz
Dee, I never paid any duty on the material I bought. Cheers,
While I have never purchased fabric from the US members of a quilting group I belong to have .
Apparently Hancocks have a special every so often where if you spend $100 it is free shipping.
One of my friends has been very happy with her purchases.
You could check to see if they have any specials at present.
I bought about £100 and I was charged, but maybe that was the UK.
Look up Fedex, as they have help pages which are useful, it depends on different agreements with different countries.
Janner France
I found that if I kept my purchases below about £20 at any one time, it got through fine and incurred no tax or handling charges. haven't ordered from the USA for a while.
Virginia Quilter, Big Horn, eQuilter, and several historic costume places were all a delight to order from.
The Hancock's web site will probably tell you the names of the company, designer, and fabric line. Then you can search for the same fabric on another store's web site. I do like Hancock's paper catalog -- lots of eye candy there!
Julia in MN
Hello Dee,
I don't know what value of goods will attract customs in Australia, but I see that all the people who have recommended Fabric.com are Americans who have purchased from this American company. I bought things from Fabric.com while living here in the UK several times and although the fabric was very nice and the customer service good as well, the shipping method was expensive and therefore (as Lizzy pointed out) this pushed up the amount I had to pay in customs considerably. One thing I remember is that they used a big box one time when the order probably would have fit into a global priority envelop.... I couldn't understand that and this is when I began to look into their shipping practices generally. The reply was that they didn't have time to send things overseas in Global Priority envelops, they shipped everything in boxes and no one else had a problem with it, so.... This was years ago, so I decided to source my fabrics elsewhere.
If I recall correctly, Keepsake Quilting adds on something like $15 to all international orders - unless they have changed their policy in the last few years. So I've never ordered from them, not wishing to be penalised for not living in the US.
Stores I love to do business with:
Those are the 3 I purchase things from most often. Good luck, come back and tell us what you bought and of course, we want photos of the finished articles as well!
-- Jo in Scotland
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