... and when it gets lost you are unable to claim the insurance amount

Honestly, I wouldn't be concerned about that. Insurance is nothing more than free revenue for the carrier.

I'd send close to 500 packages a month to destinations all over the world, and tracked items almost never go missing.

For those that do go missing, it's always to a few hotspots that I would simply avoid if selling an item this valuable (pretty much just Brazil and South Africa now; Russia and Italy are much better than they used to be).

Send to China (Beijing)? Many of my packages have gone lost or got opened and stuff taken out. And yes, the value on the CN23 form is conclusive for the insurance amount you can claim on the CN24 form.

Require signing for packages and its a solved issue.

I'm sure customs officers around the world have never seen this trick before...

Oh, I'm sure they see it every single day, but nobody cares. They're actually less likely to hassle you if you write a low value on the package - can literally shave a week+ off of delivery times.

Just fyi, doing so is actually tax fraud and very much illegal. Yes the chances of getting caught are incredibly small, but if you're doing this commercially then if caught not only you will have to pay ALL of the fees back + penalty, do it for long enough and there will be criminal charges involved.

So yes , "nobody cares" as long as you don't get caught.

Well... in my case low value on my package added a week to my delivery precisely because after seeing this trick once too many the customs are now checking everything. I had to mail the sender (big US based company) to send me the correct invoice after the customs sent me the one they received.

I think you generalize too much... do you know how every customs office work?

Aaaaand this is why now even "$20 gifts" have to pay import taxes at the EU entry customs.