Online shopping and getting stuff into India (Customs)

Well it is an important question in the world of today, more and more Indians are purchasing stuff online and importing it into India. But the question most people ask is the same. What about the customs duty?

Well to be frank with you, anything you have bought abroad and are bringing into India is chargeable as far as custom duties go except some duty free items like IT Products (Digital Camera, LCD Monitors,RAM,Processors etc., confirm the list though).

Seasoned ebay sellers and other online stores try to ensure that loyal Indian customers aren’t forced to shed customs at all. Remember you don’t need an IEC number to import stuff for personal use.

Here is what most companies do so that you don’t have to pay customs for importing stuff into India :

1. They mark the product as a gift on the customs declaration form of the package. This is illegal by the way , but there is no way to detect whether the thing is a gift or not. Unless the other person leaves an invoice inside the so called gift 😛

2. Even after declaring the commodity as a gift, Indian customs will still charge it if the price is above Rs.10000 , so these ebay sellers under-declare the value of goods. This is a double edged sword, as if the product is stolen it would mean that you would not get the right price from insurance, so this can lead to losses.

Now both these steps do save duty to the importer, but you should realise they are probably illegal and be ready for consequences. Also keep in mind the more expensive the courier, the more closely the customs will examine your package. They know that EMS and DHL aren’t used for low value items, hence these packages are scrutinised more than others. On the same time Airmail and Registered Airmail is more prone to theft especially in India.

Now the fact is most genuine importers don’t mind paying a little duty on the products they are importing into India, but the customs are so notorious that most try to circumvent them, because they know if their package is caught by Indian customs, there will be a lot more paying up to do! Also if you are importing in bulk and you don’t have an IEC, you are in big trouble.

Another question people have is what happens if the customs find your item chargeable, dont worry no one will send you to jail unless you are importing prohibited stuff. If your item is found chargeable, your package will be seized by customs and you will be sent a letter usually asking you for purpose of import etc. Be truthful while replying. If customs are satisfied with your reply, then they will calculate the appropriate customs duty and send the postman to your home who collects the duty and delivers your shipment. As easy as that. There is a small fine too for mis-declarations. Frequent mis-declarations will get you in trouble though. So be on the right side of the law. In case you have questions, feel free to ask via comments. Also this is not legal advice, hire a lawyer if you need legal advice.

Nokia earns while Matsushita Burns

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Nokia is a funny company, after it recalled the faulty batteries, it literally saved its reputation, but the interesting thing is who lost ?

Matsushita did for one, they will bear all the costs of battery replacement. But did Nokia gain in monetary terms ?

It might shock you , but it did. With all the hue and cry over the batteries, one could contact Nokia by 3 routes ::

1. Web
2. Outlet
3. SMS-es to 5555

The third option is the jackpot, gullible and non-techie users found SMS the most convenient way to find if their battery was indeed defective. But most of them weren’t aware that Nokia earns from short code SMSes sent to 5555. 5555 is a premium number for sending SMS. So in a way ,bad batteries made money for Nokia in India atleast. All said and done, its really bad business ethics on Nokia’s part to earn from their customer’s misfortunes.

Of course i am waiting for someone to sue Nokia over this.

How to know if your email is being spied upon

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Employers all around the world are keeping a closer watch on their employees, whether its sneaking on their web browsing habits or reading their personal and corporate email. While there is little you can know about how they are tracking and using your web browsing habits. Your IT Hub system administrator knows about your browsing habits. He knows how much time you spend on Orkut or Facebook. Perhaps he is the one who told the company about the man hours wasted on Orkut and Facebook, which led to the sites being banned.

There is an easy way to track your email and to see if its being read by someone else. The easiest way is to send an email to yourself with a picture hosted on your server.Include words like secret and classified documents in the email. Dont post actual company secrets. Dont read the email yourself, and see in stats if that particular image was requested. You will also be able to see the IP address of the person reading your email. Doing a WHOIS on it, you will be able to tell whether its someone in the office who is reading your email or whether its a friend who has been able to guess your password. I am saying this from personal experience , guessing passwords isnt so tuff.

Picnik : Steal images from other sites

Lol, no we are not going underground, nor are we encouraging stealing. Its just that this particular function of Picnik is extremely useful and innovative.

Here is how it works, you enter the URL of the site whose pictures you want to take, and voila , it displays all the photos on the page separately. It does not get the layout pictures and hence eliminates the screening process.

See how easily it stole the pictures of our website.

Picnik

You may also import files from Picasa Albums and Flickr. Although it wont replace picasa/or photoshop anytime soon, its a really nice step. Offers a great amount of filters which might be reviewed by us later.

And website owners beware, Picnik didnt check for a robots.txt file, so your non-robot accessable pages otherwise might also be prone to theft.

Http Code: 200 Date: May 28 12:22:56 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 32556

Agent: Picnik Image Editor +http://picnik.com

How to Save Bandwidth while Accessing E-Mail

This post goes out to all those who have limited bandwidth Internet accounts, and would like to save their limited bandwidths. Even though i dont have a limited bandwidth account, sometimes when i want to check my email fast, i still use Gmail for mobiles or Yahoo WAP to save time.

With some tips and tricks, this is possible on your Personal Computer. Here is a step by step guide telling how to access Yahoo Mail and Gmail through WAP through your computer , in the process saving some very hard earned bandwidth=money and time (also=money).

1. Get Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Firefox will help us open the WML pages.

2. Install the WML Browser Addon (Extension). WML stands for Wireless Markup Language, for your understanding, think of it as HTML for WAP(Mobile) devices.

For Yahoo Mail

Log onto wap.yahoo.co.in (Almost all nationalities’s people will be able to use this, except Japan i think because they have a different username system), Click on mail, and login !!!!

Yahoo WAP Screenshot

Yahoo Mail WAP Screenshot

 

For Gmail Email

Log onto http://m.gmail.com

Gmail mobile screenshot

Enter username and password and you are through !!!

How this would save bandwidth and time

This is very elementary, most cell phone WAP connections these days are low speed and expensive and billed by usage. Hence it makes sense to have only stripped down pages as WAP or WML pages. While a normal page may require a data transfer of 200 kbs, a WAP page would be about 4-5 kbs. a saving of approx 195 kbs. It you visit that page very frequently, it makes even more sense as the savings in bandwidth would be larger.

On a 56 kbps connection, it took me >10 seconds to load yahoo mail beta, Yahoo Mail WAP loaded almost instantly, hence time is saved.

So whats the catch ?

Like all good things in life, this one too has some weakpoints. Most sites wont use SSL for their mobile application pages(but Gmail for mobile does mind you). Also the display is anything but appealing. The website is basically a skeleton but most functionality is still retained.

How to scrap on Orkut using Opera Mini

Opera mini it seems is everyone’s favourite , why shouldnt it be , the way it renders huge pages into a few kbs is ultracool. So many people had asked me how to scrap in Opera Mini on Orkut , the answer is simple (If you want to see how to login using Opera Mini onto Orkut , see our previous post
1. Just type what all you need to type in the field

2. Then type this javascript: submitForm(document.getElementById(‘b2′),’submit’);

Remove the space between : and s in the above command.

Similarly to know more such tricks , just see the javascript of the action you want to perform on Orkut and then you can use the same javascript URL on your mobile phone browser. This has to be done as Opera mini doesnt support javascript fully till now. Another good news for all you Opera mini fans is that Opera Mini 3 Beta has been released, keep looking at this column for a review !