New Customs Forms

I send a lot of parcels to the US and use 2 local post offices. The main branch is using the new cn22 customs form and a smaller branch is still using the old ones. When we questioned this she said it is ok to still use the old ones as she hasn’t any of the new ones. I went on the Royal Mail website and it says to use the correct one so now I am panicking about the ones I have sent with the old ones on.
Has anyone else been told the old ones are still ok to use at a post office.

I’ve heard of people having issues with the new customs forms because the senders name and address is on them the OCR equipment some countries (eg USA) use is picking up the return address rather than the recipient address and the parcels are being sent back as a result.
Which Royal Mail service are you using? The new CN22 forms for standard airmail includes a bar code that the old ones didn’t have and the packages need that barcode for the pre submission of data for quicker customs clearance. Tracked services come with a barcode so the data can be submitted against that and they don’t need a second barcode on the cn22 (so the old cn22 would be fine with them).

Hi Sasha,

Thanks for your reply. One post office uses the old ones which don’t need my address on and another post office is issuing the new ones where you do. They usually give me a few so that I can write on them at home to save time but they don’t seem to have enough of the new ones to be able to do tha.These new ones are an absolute pain, can you imagine the queues at Xmas when things get back to normal and you have to wait for people to fill out the senders address on each parcel.

I recently posted a parcel to the US for someone else and they had used an old CN22 sticker. Our local post master changed it for a new one and said to destroy all the old ones as they are no longer valid.
I’ve been using click and drop for my US shipments for about a year now and haven’t had any problems with that. In fact the parcels often get through quicker.

Hi Angela,

That is rather worrying. If my buyers end up with another charge I think I will be putting in a complaint about the post office.

Has anyone got a picture of the new ones?
I haven’t had many international sales lately and had a pile of the old ones to use up so haven’t seen/heard anything about the new ones.
I am going to have to post something to the US in the next couple of weeks though, so need to decide whether to use the last of my old ones or wait to see if my post office has the new ones (but yes, annoying having to fill it in at the queue).

I needed to pick up a bundle of CN22s from my local PO last week and queried this. Was told the old were still valid and she didn’t have any new ones. My daughter has been sending packages to the US on a regular basis and they all seem to be reaching their destination without any problems.

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My post office told me that the old ones were still valid for all countries apart from USA. They said you had to use one of the new one for United States, so I am using up all my old ones on other countries like Australia etc and just putting the new ones on USA parcels.
I think every post office seem to have different opinions!
Also, I’m not sure whether to just tick the ‘other’ box or ‘sale of goods’ box. Anyone know?

It seems like they don’t know that they are doing. I will use the main post office until the other one gets the correct customs forms. It’s cheaper to post things at the other one. I can send the same item and 1 will be sent as large letter and the same item at the main post office sends it as a parcel which costs more.

You should maybe query the small parcel/large letter discrepancy at your main post office. If you think it should be going as a large letter and they disagree, ask them to see if it will fit through the large letter slot. Do you have your own large letter measuring slot, so that you can check it yourself? If not, I’d recommend buying one. I ordered mine form Amazon.

Yes I have one and always check before posting. The other post office will squash and pull the item through the measuring slot whereas the main office if it won’t fit without squashing sends it as a parcel. I even put small holes in the packaging to allow air to escape. I gave up a long time ago trying to work out the way post offices work.

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I picked up some of the new forms so I can have them handy. They are more detailed than the old ones. Now anyone looking at the pacakge would know what someone bought, how much they paid for it, where they bought it from and the customer’s name and address! And all of this information and ours are under the barcode? Isn’t that violating the customers’ privacy? And ours, I’d like to add. I thought we are supposed to protect our customer’s privacy.