The arrangement is not mine for once. My cousin collects vintage audio and buys it from sellers in the United States, with the occasional collectible, a piece of jewellery, coins, small valuable things of that kind. He asked me, as the customs person he knows, how to arrange full DDP with an agent on the US side: two or three parcels combined into one shipment, once or twice a month, delivered to him in Poland with clearance, duties and taxes dealt with. He also wants careful handling and a price that makes sense at low volume.
What I know about steel is of limited use. What would you insist such an agent show him before he commits?
I have signed DDP into the EU and learned what the letters cost. Delivered duty paid means the seller, or whoever he appoints, faces the destination customs for the buyer: clears the goods, pays what is due, answers when the value is queried. Your cousin's agent is not moving boxes; he is taking that position. Before signing I would want, in writing, whether the price is all in or freight plus later surprises, and who pays when a value is challenged.
The agent books the combined box onto a courier's DDP product, and that product has a list of what it will not accept. Coins on their own, and jewellery above a modest value, sit on most of those lists because the courier will not carry the risk: declare them and they are refused, hide them and nobody is covered. The audio is a different problem. A used amplifier with no original receipt is exactly what an officer in Poland queries, and the answer is the auction invoice, not the agent's word.
Consolidation is a beautiful word. In the yard it means a guy with a tape gun deciding your grandfather's turntable fits in a smaller box.
You have the list right, and the step before it is worth asking about too: who opens those three parcels, who repacks them, and does the cover on that DDP product run per box or per piece. Once three sellers' items ride under one label, one number covers all three, and a tonearm nobody photographed is nobody's problem.
From the Union side, as the mirror rather than a verdict. On arrival in Poland the goods must be declared for free circulation by somebody established in the Union, and a US agent is not, so either your cousin stands as importer or the agent works through a representative here; the contract should say which before the first parcel moves. Import VAT is settled at release, and who is out of pocket for it, and who answers when a used amplifier's value is queried, follows from that choice.
