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Any time you cross a border with goods, there's a question that is asked about if this is for personal use or not. Sometimes this is on a form, sometimes in person, but the answer to this question changes what is allowed and what fees need to be paid.
Since you are operating a business service, you need to ensure that a) it is legal to take that item across that border, and b) The relevant fees are paid for an import business (not for personal use)
It doesn't take a lawyer to see that you'd be in trouble for not following the laws of the land your couriers are traveling to. But you do need to run this past a lawyer (and probably a set of lawyers, one for each jurisdiction) before you get one of your couriers thrown in jail.
It is possible to run this legally, but then the process won't be as cheap as I think you're expecting it to be.
Couldn't have explained it better. Just one thought though: What if you buy it in a duty free shop?
"Won't know, can't tell." Although you can't tell what the NSA might be able to tell border and customs... ;)
Duty Free shops, I believe, are for personal use only. Gifts to family and friends are overlooked, but the limits are small enough anyway that you can't possibly give too much away - i.e. 1L of booze, a few bottles of wine.
I am intrigued by this part: "It is possible to run this legally, but then the process won't be as cheap as I think you're expecting it to be." Can you please expand?
Do you mean that one can 'enforce' duty payment, and then it can work?
Each country has it's import fees for commercial use. These are often quite large, and, as an import company, you will have to pay them to operate legally.
The reason some of these fees is large is due to governments trying to control the import process, not due to any inherent costs associated with the items, so where these fees apply can not be guessed without having knowledge of the specific laws and treaties involved. As an individual, you've never needed to know these laws and fees
Also, your legal costs to import random things over random borders is going to be quite large. Most importer companies start with one set of items into a single country to defray the legal costs for that one set of items over many items sold. i.e. It's as much legal effort to commerically import 10 cases of wine into the US from France as it is to import 10,000 cases. But importing Cheese from France to the US is a completely different set of laws, and could cost the same as the legal costs for the wine.
Also, airlines are very sketchy about people carrying stuff for other people. Major security problem right there, as well as the fact that the import rules and rates will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction - the fact that people are being incentivised to carry it may also bring it into them "carrying on" as an import business, rather than just general travellers.
I was thinking that this is about people buying stuff for others and bringing it for them. So this isn't necessarily an unknown item being asked to carry. But I see your overall point.
Oh, no, I get that - but if you're a (paranoid) security conscious airline, it's a fairly short hop/easy exploit to make sure someone buys something bad to take on the plane - presto, fresh skinned mule.
On a positive note on how to move forward on this idea, there's an example in the Seattle startup scene that is tackling a similar government regulation issue by focusing on exactly one set of regulations at a time.
Remitly https://www.remitly.com/ provides a service to send cash overseas to the families of immigrants who now work in the US
Sending cash has a lot of regulatory hurdles, so they picked 1 US state (WA) and one overseas country (the Philippines) to start their business, and then expanding their reach, first to other US states, and eventually to other countries. Focusing on exactly one set of regulations at each end vastly simplifies the legal issues (and costs)