International Shipping FAQ
Last Update: Feb 17th, 2022
Before Placing An Order
In the case of the 27 member states of the EU, for orders under 150 Euros, the VAT (varies, but usually around 20% range) will be charged on our site and remitted directly via the IOSS system. If VAT is charged on your order, there will not be additional charges of any kind. For EU orders over 150 Euros, our site will not charge VAT and there will be clearance fees (including VAT) charged upon entry to the EU. This is to comply with laws put in place by the EU as of July 1 2021 — we did not determine the 150 Euro amount. Note that, if your order is over 150 Euros, you will not be charged VAT on our site, but you will be charged VAT and possibly other fees before delivery.
In the UK (no longer in the EU), you will not have any additional import charges for orders below 135GBP. The 135GBP limit only applies to goods in the cart but VAT is also chargable on shipping costs. In the case of those 135GBP or less of goods orders, the VAT will be charged on our store and we will remit it directly to HMRC. This means that you will no long have COD VAT or processing/clearance fees as as long as your order is under 135GBP of goods. However, if your order goes over 135GBP then our store will not collect VAT and you will have to pay VAT (20%), duty (rates vary) and a clearance fee (typically in the 8-10GBP range) upon arrival to the UK. This should greatly simplify the import fee process for the UK for orders under 135GBP.
It depends on your country and the amount. If you’re in the EU and the order is over 150 Euros, you will have customs charges — some combination of VAT, duty, clearance fees, etc. Even within the EU, fees will differ from country to country, so you should be familiar with your country’s laws before ordering. However, if the VAT is charged on our site, then you will not pay any additional import/customs/VAT/etc fees upon delivery.
In some countries like Hong Kong and Singapore, the duty limits are pretty high and taxes are less likely. For instance, in Singapore, the duty limit is S$400 — below this, taxes are typically not charged as far as we know. In places like Australia and Canada the duty limits are also fairly high so fees are possible but only highly likely on more expensive shipments. However, many countries in Europe have limits around 15-20 Euros before fees start to be charged.
In pretty much any country, there is some point at which import fees will kick in, but that amount differs. So it really depends on the country you’re shipping to. Our shipping does not cover these import charges.
For the countries where we don’t ship via DHL Global Mail, we only use DHL Express and those charges are not tiered. They are pulled directly from our DHL account and the prices range from reasonable to absurd, depending on the country it’s being shipped to. DHL Express can be fairly expensive but the prices are something that we don’t have much control over. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as easy, cheap, fast and reliable shipping to some areas of the world — we wish there was, however.
Note, Anta shoes in your cart will trigger different shipping prices. We discuss the Anta shipping costs on the Anta product page.
Yes. Orders of $100 or more qualify for free shipping. Simply use promo code hookgrip at checkout — it should pop up if you’re eligible. However, some exclusions apply, including: Romaleos, Anta, ATG hoodies and thumb tape. Due to the size, weight and profit margins of these items, we cannot offer free shipping.
It’s also important to note that free shipping online applies to orders shipped via DHL Global Mail, our normal economy shipping service. We don’t offer free shipping for countries where we only ship DHL Express. We currently ship via DHL Global Mail to 44 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom.
After Ordering
Yes, as long as your order hasn’t already left our warehouse. Changes cannot be made to addresses after they have been picked up.
Check your order confirmation email after ordering, and if you see any mistakes, contact us immediately. Just reply to your order email as that will come to our support@hookgrip.com shared inbox. But as stated in the prior question, if your order has been picked up from our warehouse, we cannot make any changes.
Yes. You will receive an automatic email from us with your tracking number once the shipping label for your order has been printed. If it’s been awhile since ordering and you haven’t received an email, please first check your spam folder before contacting us. We generally find that hotmail, msn, outlook and live (anything microsoft) tend to go to junk/spam. Most other major providers like gmail generally do not put our emails into the spam folder.
We typically ship outside of the USA using DHL Global Mail, which is a discounted division of DHL. It isn’t as fast as their premium product, DHL Express. And DHL Express Customer Service does not deal with DHL Global Mail shipments — you shouldn’t directly contact DHL Express with your tracking number as they will have no idea what you’re talking about. DHL Global Mail, while slower than premium-cost express services, does have end-to-end tracking for every country that we ship to.
In recent weeks (at the time of this update in November 2020), we have added DHL Express for most international destinations where we have any semblance of a customer base and where DHL Express can reliably ship to.
If you pay extra for DHL Express at checkout, then DHL Express will do the final delivery. However, if you opt for the other options, your order will leave our warehouse as DHL Global Mail (a completely separate division not connected to the DHL Express division).
With DHL Global Mail, the delivery is mostly done by the local post in the country. Typically the package is transported to the destination country by DHL Global Mail (or contractors for them) and then once the package arrives in the destination country, it is transferred to the local post. So final delivery will mostly be done by whatever national post organization is in charge in the destination country.
Some examples of this include: Royal Mail (UK), Aus Post (Australia), Canada Post (Canada), La Poste (France), Poste Italiane (Italy), Correos (Spain), PostNL (Netherlands), Poczta Polska (Poland), Bpost (Belgium), etc.
There are a few exceptions. With Mexico, our deliveries will actually be delivered by DHL Express. This is just how DHL Global Mail handles Mexico, it’s still going out the door with the same packages as our items going to the rest of the world. Another exception, sometimes, is Japan. While most shipments are delivered by Japan Post, we have seen some be delivered by Sagawa.
In general, you will be able to figure out the final delivery company by looking at your tracking page and looking at the local tracking number.
Delivery time is dependent on many factors, but mostly on which country you are located in. At the time of writing (Oct 2020), here are some examples of delivery time over the last 10 orders to a few international destinations:
- Australia: Averaged 16 days, with a low of 11 days, and high of 22 days
- Canada: Averaged 9 days, with a low of 7 days, and high of 13 days.
- France: Averaged 8 days, with a low of 6 days, and high of 11 days.
- Sweden: Averaged 16 days, with a low of 13 days, and high of 21 days.
One important note is that these days are counted from the time when the package was processed at the DHL Global Mail warehouse in northern New Jersey. Typically packages are processed within 48 hours of being picked up at our warehouse.
We don’t maintain these sorts of lists for all countries because the information is, for the most part, not very relevant.
- Firstly, these lists/times cannot be relied upon for anything with a tight deadline. It’s not safe to assume that any package would be faster than the “high” timeline. It’s safe to assume that it’s likely to be faster, but there are no guarantees on timelines with services like DHL Global Mail.
- Secondly, these times vary wildly depending on the time of year. The holiday season often sees transit times double for some countries. For instance, in December 2019 we saw Italy basically shut down their customs processing around mid December and lots of packages from early December didn’t get delivered until January. But packages sent in mid November were arriving around 2-3 weeks after being sent. Another example is that a lot of countries had massive slowdowns in April-May of 2020 because of COVID related problems both in processing and in air transport between countries. These sorts of slowdowns are impossible for us to know about or predict so we don’t want to quote a customer something like 10-20 days and have 20 days come and go without delivery.
The good news is that DHL Global Mail is generally quite quick, economical and reliable to the countries that we ship to using that service. We’ve eliminated the ones where the local post is a problem. So you stand a very good chance of getting your order in sub 3 weeks in most countries. But we can’t promise a timeline or guarantee.
International Package Tracking
- Delivery by USPS Int’l (will typically start with LX and end with US)
- Delivery by Postal provider (will typically end with DE), etc.
You can also get it under the “More Shipment Details” accordion slider on the https://www.logistics.dhl website.
You can use this number on your local post website to get more accurate tracking details. However, the number often will not work until the item is actually physically received in the destination country. Sometimes the transit process from the USA to the destination country can entail a few weeks of relatively little tracking visibility. This is more common during busier time periods or countries with less international mail volume. As an example, when we ship to Malta, we always see a slower process here than when we ship to Italy, even though they are right next to each other. Simply because Malta has lower mail volume than Italy and because trucking over land is faster/easier/cheaper than transport from European sort centers to an island like Malta.
- EN ROUTE TO DHL ECOMMERCE DISTRIBUTION CENTER: Happens at the time the label is generated.
- PACKAGE RECEIVED AT DHL ECOMMERCE DISTRIBUTION CENTER: Happens when the package arrives at the processing warehouse. This can take anywhere from several hours to several days from the time you get your email. It all depends on how your shipment syncs with our pickups.
- PROCESSED: This usually happens several hours after arriving at the distribution center.
- PROCESSING COMPLETED AT ORIGIN: Typically this happens 1-3 days after it’s marked Processed.
After those first four is when things become quite different from country to country. In many instances, tracking will proceed something like this, after the above four statuses occur:
- ARRIVAL IN COUNTRY [DESTINATION COUNTRY]
- PROCESSED AT LOCAL DISTRIBUTION CENTER
- DEPARTED FROM LOCAL DISTRIBUTION CENTER
- DELIVERED
Depending on the item and the country, you may see customs related statuses mixed in there. Something like “HELD BY CUSTOMS“, “CLEARED CUSTOMS“, etc are common to see in the mix after “ARRIVAL IN COUNTRY [DESTINATION COUNTRY]“. It’s also fairly common to see statuses missing or to see statuses twice. For instance, some countries don’t do the “ARRIVAL IN COUNTRY [DESTINATION COUNTRY]” status but you’ll just see two or three “PROCESSED AT LOCAL DISTRIBUTION CENTER” with various locations listed. However, generally, you can expect to see some or all of the above in some reasonably similar list/order.
The timeline for these statuses is wildly variant. Most commonly shipped to countries will see “ARRIVAL IN COUNTRY [DESTINATION COUNTRY]” just a few days or maybe a week after “PROCESSING COMPLETED AT ORIGIN“. Some others won’t see an update for several weeks. Additionally, some countries will see a transit through Germany on their tracking as DHL has lots of facilities in Germany and it’s more efficient and cheaper for them to route a lot of shipments through there.