- Home
- Shipping guides
Shipping guides
Practical guides to customs forms, international addressing and label printing, written for small sellers who post their own parcels.
What these cover, and what they deliberately do not
These are written one at a time, from the postal operators’ own published rules rather than from other websites, and each one is about a specific way a parcel goes wrong. They are reference material rather than posts: how a CN22 is filled in does not change with the season, so nothing here is dated to be read in a particular month.
Some things are missing on purpose. There are no de-minimis thresholds, no VAT rates, no transit times and no prohibited-item lists, because all four change often enough that any figure published here would be misleading within months, and a sender who trusts a stale number pays for it at the border. Where a number matters, the guides say which authority to check it against instead of quoting one.
The customs guides are the ones worth reading before your first international parcel. A vague contents description is the single most common reason a parcel is opened, and the wrong category box is the second. Both are free to get right and expensive to get wrong.
How to fill in a CN22 customs form
Every box explained, plus the three entries that get parcels stopped.
Shipping internationally from the United States
Letter-size printing, customs forms, APO/FPO, and addressing for outbound US parcels.
Postal or courier: choosing a shipping service
Post office or courier, and the parcels that clearly belong to one or the other.
Shipping to and from the EU customs union
Free circulation inside, full declarations outside, and the European countries that are not members.
Shipping from the UK after Brexit
EU parcels need customs forms, and the CN22 was withdrawn in June 2026.
International shipping for Etsy and eBay sellers
What the platform covers, what it leaves to you, and the gaps in between.
How to address an APO, FPO or DPO parcel
Looks domestic, is not. The rules that keep military mail out of foreign networks.
Gift, sale or sample: choosing the customs category
Five boxes, five meanings, and the one that saves you paying duty twice.
HS tariff codes: how to find the right one
Six digits that set the duty rate, and how to find yours without paying anyone.
Declared value: what to write, and who pays the duty
What goes in the value box, and who gets the bill at the other end.
How to write an international address
One rule that never changes, and the local conventions that do.
Restricted and prohibited items: how to check
Three lists, not one, and the categories that catch sellers out.
Shipping label sizes: 4x6, A6, A4 and Letter
What fits what, and the A4-versus-Letter trap that wastes a sheet every time.
How to pack a parcel so it survives the network
What actually happens to a box in a sorting hub, and how to pack for it.
Barcodes on shipping labels: Code 128 and QR
Which symbol to use, why quiet zones matter, and what a self-printed barcode can and cannot do.
Printing shipping labels: thermal, laser and the settings that ruin them
Which printer, which settings, and how to check the label is really 4x6.
Why parcels come back, and what to do about it
Six causes, how to read the markings, and what to change before resending.
When a parcel goes missing: enquiries, claims and deadlines
When it counts as lost, who can claim, and the deadlines nobody reads until too late.