Hello all,

My family is travelling “heavy”, and we would like to ship some bags back to Canada rather than take them all on the plane. Have found services that do this, including one that gives a discount for Air Canada customers (see AC website ‘Baggage Forward’ service).

My question is about customs: it seems that, when we land, we provide form BSF192 describing what’s in our bags, the CBSA officer stamps it, and we provide that to the luggage shipping service to release the bag without having to pay taxes on its contents. Great!

Except that form BSF192 only refers to the value of goods acquired abroad. Since our bags will contain no such goods, the form will indicate a value of $0. I can’t imagine that a form claiming a value of $0 would actually get stamped, and even if it did, that the courier company would accept it as sufficient to release a bag with 50 lbs of clothing in it that clearly has a value greater than $0, and that the subtlety of when those goods were acquired would be meaningless at that point.

So, how do we resolve it? Despite the service being referred from AC, when contacted they told me they outsource to DHL, and that DHL only provides the service when moving to Canada (not for returning residents). When I sent them the link to the form and explained how it would work. DHL agreed to let us use the service. But they are obviously not experts in how it all works.

might there be such an expert on this forum?

Did you ask Luggage Forward? Someone shipping golf clubs or skis would not be bringing anything in that they didn't previously own so this seems like a pretty common occurrence.

Indeed. See below re unhelpful deference to DHL