having never bought anything from the usa I finally took the plunge, paid my postage etc Knowing full well there would be a small customs fee. What I didn't expect was the post office to charge me £8 handling fee, ok fair enough if I had to go to the post office to pay I would be collecting it. However cause the weather was more than a little inclement I though OOh I will pay on line but b@#*7r me I still would have to fetch it so much for handling. I will think twice now about overseas purchases
oh and just to add insult to injury having just got soaking wet fetching my parcel as I've walked through the door the sun has come out :'(
Sure you aren't a minor rain deity of Norse extraction.....?
ianS
It's awfully windy here. Just went across Runcorn bridge crab-wise. :-S
Quote from: raykey on 12 February 2014, 01:33:42 PM
having never bought anything from the usa I finally took the plunge, paid my postage etc Knowing full well there would be a small customs fee. What I didn't expect was the post office to charge me £8 handling fee, ok fair enough if I had to go to the post office to pay I would be collecting it. However cause the weather was more than a little inclement I though OOh I will pay on line but b@#*7r me I still would have to fetch it so much for handling. I will think twice now about overseas purchases
In all fairness the problem is Royal Mail, not the US here. You should be happy they did not use EMS which royally screws you for minimum 45 € equivalent.
I agree the fee is a bit outrageous for what they actually do but if you live close to the import hub doing your own clearance is always an option. Thats what I did in Germany and for the one occason I should have paid duty the office let me off as I was a regular and always had a nice chat with them. Maybe they were also reluctant to handle all the paperwork for less than a fiver in fees....
Quote from: sebigboss79 on 12 February 2014, 06:03:53 PM
... if you live close to the import hub doing your own clearance is always an option.
I'm not sure if this is an option in the UK? I import quite a few things for the business, and always get hit with the larger £15 (?) handling fees on the packages. They don't seem to do much with them, just put a card through the door for me to go and collect it. For a handling fee, it would be nice if they could actually deliver the parcel...
I've always thought that there should be some kind of either pre-pay system, or account system in place for companies who are importing on a regular basis. Check it in, I pay online, the parcel gets delivered kind of setup. Or add it to an account and I pay it monthly by direct debit. There has to be a better way of doing it these days.
Also, another thing which frustrates is that they never give you a proper receipt for your payment. All you've got is the sticker on the parcel itself, which you've got to cut out and keep for the accounts. It makes a lovely lump in the books when the package was in a thick cardboard box... >:( I've asked them for a proper one before, and been told the sticker is all that's available.
Quote from: fsn on 12 February 2014, 05:39:26 PM
It's awfully windy here. Just went across Runcorn bridge crab-wise. :-S
Did you eat something strange at lunch?
You ill not b charged if the goods have a value of less than £15. after this you will get charged VAT of 20% plus the exorbitant Post office collection charge of £8.
Your options are
1 Politely asking if the sender wlll put the value on the customs slip at less than £15. They may be reluctant to do this as it could affect thier claim if the parcel gets lost. It is technically dishonest as well.
2 It is often cheaper to get the sender to split the order so the value of each package is less than £15 and charge you postage for each parcel. This is particuarly true for light weight high valus items.
Some stuff from the US is so much cheaper the charges are well worth it. A few Years back I ordered an airbrush and compressor from the US and saved about £170 so the customs and PO charge of £40 was well worth it. Paasche the compressor supplier give you the option to order some of thier compressors with 240V supply so no issues when it gets here, apart from changing the plug, or using a shaver plug
Quote from: Just a few Orcs on 13 February 2014, 08:30:42 AM
1 Politely asking if the sender wlll put the value on the customs slip at less than £15. They may be reluctant to do this as it could affect thier claim if the parcel gets lost. It is technically dishonest as well.
You need to be careful doing this though; if the customs people do a check, you can be liable to some serious fines. There was a case a while back here in Canada, a guy had some stuff sent to him that was valued at about $250, he got the seller to put $25 value (below the limit here), but since it was coming up looking funny on a scan, customs opened it, found he seller's business card and looked it up online to see what the true cost was. The buyer got fined $500 plus various other fees and the customs handling etc on top.
The worst thing about getting stuff shipped to Canada is when sellers use couriers like UPS, since they ALWAYS charge the buyer bullshit handling fees. I don't know anyone who's got a UPS parcel shipped from outside Canada that hasn't had to pay at least $17 per parcel, and usually more (it's based on the value of the goods inside). I've had to pay $45 on a parcel containing about $200 worth of figures before. What's worse, UPS deny they have these fees to the seller, which makes hem look a cheaper alternative than their rivals, because they're gouging the buyer not just charging the seller. When the By Fire and Sword kickstarter was going, me and several other Canadians had to plead that they not use UPS (we had some quite large pledges among us here, over $500 in some cases), as we'd have been charged an arm and a leg if they had. When BF&S contacted UPS to see if they could do something, they denied that they charged any fees to the buyer. It was only when we sent links to 4-5 fora containing thousands of complaints about UPS' fees that BF&S believed us and worked out another way.
It's gotten so bad that if a seller only uses UPS, and won't send my stuff via the normal post office, I won't do business with them any more.
Had something similar just over a year ago.......
The 'duty' due was £1......
The collection fee from the PO was £8 !!
Bloody rip off !! >:( >:(
Cheers - Phil.
Could be worse my imported guitar neck and body from the US set me back a small fortune in import duties a few years back, she is bloody gorgeous though, and sings like a nightingale 8)