Customs charge

hux · 10 Jul 2010 at 19:40

I have a parcel to pick up, thing is it has a £13 customs charge but the item is no more than £36 plus delivery.

I thought it had to be over say £50 odd before you got stung, is there any way i can contest this?

Strife212 · 10 Jul 2010 at 19:41

Its about 50p customs charge and £12 handling fee I bet :/

chaparral · 10 Jul 2010 at 19:43

Where it from ??

Business Parcels from channel islands to england get customs charges if there value is over £18..(£32 for non business parcels) including the P&P price if the VAT is not prepaid..

hux · 10 Jul 2010 at 19:43

£12 odd customs charge and a £1 handling fee.

Apparently they can charge for commercial goods that exceed £18 wtf that's a new one on me.

It's from the usa, im feeling a bit ripped off.

Next time i'll ask him to send it as a gift.

Biohazard · 10 Jul 2010 at 19:56

If its a company they will nearly always refuse a request for making a misdeclaration to customs.

If its from a person, bit different.

hux · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:01

It's from ebay if that helps.

chaparral · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:02

hux said:
Apparently they can charge for commercial goods that exceed £18 wtf that's a new one on me.

That has been the same for years..

Werewolf · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:02

hux said:
£12 odd customs charge and a £1 handling fee.

Apparently they can charge for commercial goods that exceed £18 wtf that's a new one on me.

It's from the usa, im feeling a bit ripped off.

Next time i'll ask him to send it as a gift.

It's pretty much always been that way, £18 or more before postage and it's liable for customs.

Getting it marked as a gift , from a private individual just raises that to £36.

The Customs part of the charge sounds way off, it sounds more like (assuming it's RM), you've got the standard RM handling fee of £8+ about £5 duty and VAT. (which would work out about right for the value).

A company cannot iirc legally mark goods as a gift, and most of them will flat out refuse to do so as if they are caught it can cause a lot of trouble for them in the future.

hux · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:12

Nope says £13.87 including £1 handling fee for underpaid items.

Customs charge does indeed sound very harsh to me.

chriscpritchard · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:13

Werewolf said:
It's pretty much always been that way, £18 or more before postage and it's liable for customs.

Getting it marked as a gift , from a private individual just raises that to £36.

The Customs part of the charge sounds way off, it sounds more like (assuming it's RM), you've got the standard RM handling fee of £8+ about £5 duty and VAT. (which would work out about right for the value).

A company cannot iirc legally mark goods as a gift, and most of them will flat out refuse to do so as if they are caught it can cause a lot of trouble for them in the future.

I don't get how RM can get away with charging £8 as a handling fee, wish customs would let you pay them directly...

Biohazard · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:14

hux said:
It's from ebay if that helps.

Again depends if its a company or a individual seller..

As for the customs charge amount, are you able to tell me what it is you had imported?

brainiac ghost said:
I don't get how RM can get away with charging £8 as a handling fee, wish customs would let you pay them directly...

Public spending cuts closed the ability to pay customs direct, plus it now allows RM to rip you off to try and stave off their own decline.

hux · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:17

Well he does have 1200 feedback but doesn't seem to treat himself as a business.

http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayI...sspagename=VIP:feedback&ftab=FeedbackAsSeller

I hope ebay links are allowed here im not sure.

Pudney · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:18

brainiac ghost said:
I don't get how RM can get away with charging £8 as a handling fee, wish customs would let you pay them directly...

Because the £8 also pays for the wages of the person who make the customs declaration along with all the associated office overheads and necessities maybe?

It really amuses me how simplified people sometimes see the world as.

Edit: As clarification thats simplified world not simplified people

Biohazard · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:20

Seems to be just a non business seller, you could certainly ask him to gift them.

Although he may want to keep himself right too.

Biohazard · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:21

Pudney@work said:
Because the £8 also pays for the wages of the person who make the customs declaration along with all the associated office overheads and necessities maybe?

That is still quite a heavy profit tbh.

Form - free, or maybe 20-30p each depending. 10 minutes to fill out = £8?

hux · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:27

So any way out of this, or am i going to bend over and take it up the tradesman.

chriscpritchard · 10 Jul 2010 at 20:29

Pudney@work said:
Because the £8 also pays for the wages of the person who make the customs declaration along with all the associated office overheads and necessities maybe?

It really amuses me how simplified people sometimes see the world as.

Edit: As clarification thats simplified world not simplified people

I probably wouldn't complain if the handling fee wasn't MORE than the tax! To be honest, with todays technology you should be able to pre pay tax online, and get a unique barcode to stick on the packaging that could then be scanned by HMRC, the barcode could contain the customs declaration (filled in online) and the fact that they've paid... They could add a small (£1 or so) fee for using this and I wouldn't complain!

Pudney · 10 Jul 2010 at 21:57

Biohazard said:
That is still quite a heavy profit tbh.

Form - free, or maybe 20-30p each depending. 10 minutes to fill out = £8?

You assume it's a paper form

As an indication, moons ago I worked at Fedex doing customs clearance. There were circa 40-50 people in the office during the day with roughly 15 odd people overnight. This is everyday all year round, including bank holidays and christmas day. Then there were specialised software to do it, networked into the CHIEF system (HMRC system). If the goods were high valued then the tax would need to be collected beforehand (as the company normally pays with their Deferment Account) which had a completely seperate office in the midlands dedicated to this reason. There were also a dedicated office elsewhere and the staff who purely handled any customer queries and phonecalls. A straightforward normal import would only be a few minutes work at most, more complicated ones would take longer, some of the worst were imports with little detail on the shipping documents. Then you'd need to phone up the person and try to decipher what was coming in, and argue about the duty and taxes (which of course are set by the EU and government not us) which could take in the region of half an hour sometimes. But when it comes to billing there was no real way to identify who took longer. So the handling fee has to be standardised to cover all this.

Of course some people just requested we notify them when the package entered the country, and they did the rest themselves. Then there was no handling fee

Pudney · 10 Jul 2010 at 22:01

brainiac ghost said:
I probably wouldn't complain if the handling fee wasn't MORE than the tax! To be honest, with todays technology you should be able to pre pay tax online, and get a unique barcode to stick on the packaging that could then be scanned by HMRC, the barcode could contain the customs declaration (filled in online) and the fact that they've paid... They could add a small (£1 or so) fee for using this and I wouldn't complain!

That's not how it works. All goods coming in above £18 need to be declared. HMRC don't actually do any of this, agents do as HMRC don't have anywhere near the levels of staff. As for doing the customs declaration that would require knowledge of the goods harmonised tariff, reason for import, and a whole host of other info.

If you know all this information then you can quite happily do it yourself and avoid the handling fee - just have the shipping documents marked with that!