I dont understand. Being a company that deals on a day to day basis of international shipping, it would be stupid of them NOT to keep records of custs expenses?! Laptop Is at my local depot now being "held" until payment tracker says. I assume I won't recieve it in the next 3-5 working days. Bloody stupid
I'm genuinely surprised you don't understand this. You chose to buy something from outside the EU. This means that you are importing it into the EU. This means that the government will charge you for the privelage of importing an item (importing items rather than buying them here does nothing to boost our own economy as the money leaves the country)
All that revenue from you buying a laptop abroad has been lost - that could have gone to a UK company and helped our economy - and the government have missed a slice of what should have come to them - so they recoup it on entry instead.
This is incredibly basic economics, I'm very surprised you haven't come across this before.
When you purchase something it is shipped under an INCO term - in this case "DDU" is probably applicable (it is the most commonly used INCO term) DDU stands for "Delivered Duty Unpaid".
To quote Wikipedia (which sums it up quite nicely):
"This term means that the seller delivers the goods to the buyer to the named place of destination in the contract of sale. The goods are not cleared for import or unloaded from any form of transport at the place of destination. The buyer is responsible for the costs and risks for the unloading, duty and any subsequent delivery beyond the place of destination.
However, if the buyer wishes the seller to bear cost and risks associated with the import clearance, duty, unloading and subsequent delivery beyond the place of destination, then this all needs to be explicitly agreed upon in the contract of sale."
As most companies ship DDU unless specifically requested to do otherwise, they will not keep a record of customs charges to other countries. Why would they care? They ship the item and once it arrives in it's destination country the problem ceases to be theirs. They won't even get told how much the duty is normally, because they don't need to know - it is the concern of the receiver.
Energize and -Ad- rightly point out that it IS possible to ship items DDP (Delivered Duty Paid) which removes this problem. It is, however, uncommon and not considered standard procedure.
Many companies will not be willing to entertain shipping DDP - they are essentially "losing" money by exporting which does not make good economic sense when they could sell the item domestically and not pay those costs.
taking it to 790 (give or take) the laptop is worth £1800 on the hp uk site so Im saving a crap load. and its not in the uk shops sadly.