unpopular opinion: most of what gets said here about customs is guesswork
Thinking out loud about this: unpopular opinion: most of what gets said here about customs is guesswork. The rules where I live changed between two orders six months apart. Nothing was announced; I found out by reading. Kept every document including the dull ones. When a process started, having the dates in order…
the answer for Germany does not apply anywhere else
Why regional stock keeps coming up in every thread on this board.
If the line you want is held in a warehouse in your own country, your order is a domestic shipment. There is no import event, no clearance stage and no notice to manage. That is not a workaround; it is a different transaction.
So the useful pre-order question is which lines a supplier actually holds regionally rather than drop-ships from origin. It is one email, the answer is usually a list, and for anybody who has spent a fortnight watching a tracking page it reframes the whole problem.
This. Ordering from regional stock takes the entire question off the table, which is why it comes up in every one of these threads.
Small fix — those rules apply to commercial import. Personal import is governed separately and more narrowly.
Correction: that is a request for information, not a seizure notice. Different document, different process, different deadline.