Customs Charges

WuMyster · 7 Jun 2015 at 22:25

I'm looking to get a pair of shoes from America costing about £120. Obviously I'll have to be paying customs, but after using a customs calculator, it came up to £160. No way am I paying that.
I ordered a £500/600 laptop from America a few years ago and the customs on that was about £120-180 IIRC.

Will the customs for my shoes be £160 or considerably less.

itchy · 7 Jun 2015 at 22:33

Wear them!

Socaddict · 7 Jun 2015 at 22:44

Is that the customs charge or the total cost including the customs fees?

WuMyster · 7 Jun 2015 at 22:45

Socaddict said:
Is that the customs charge or the total cost including the customs fees?

I believe it was everything to get the shoes to my doorstep

itchy · 7 Jun 2015 at 22:48

Lol thought you where coming back.

See if the company will send as a gift or sample as opposed to retail? Worth a try!

arknor · 7 Jun 2015 at 22:52

don't forget rm/pf will charge you 10-20 if the customs isn't pre paid

GAC · 7 Jun 2015 at 22:53

the customs charges and vat i can understand, its when parcel force or whoever charge you £35 for handling it even though you have paid for postage. thats what i got charged on a £60 order a few years back.

WuMyster · 7 Jun 2015 at 22:57

itchy said:
Lol thought you where coming back.

See if the company will send as a gift or sample as opposed to retail? Worth a try!

Oh I wasn't clear. Yeah it's bought from online. There's no company behind this. The shoes aren't really sold here, so there are resellers over there.

GAC said:
the customs charges and vat i can understand, its when parcel force or whoever charge you £35 for handling it even though you have paid for postage. thats what i got charged on a £60 order a few years back.

Yeah I was charged an additional £12 for handing my laptop a few years back.

Burnsy2023 · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:00

£160 sounds about right. VAT alone is £24, plus import duty and handling charges.

GAC · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:06

and who knows you may not even get charged, iv had two packages roughly the same price from the same store turn up one hit with full charges the other not. go figure.

arknor · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:06

GAC said:
the customs charges and vat i can understand, its when parcel force or whoever charge you £35 for handling it even though you have paid for postage. thats what i got charged on a £60 order a few years back.

handling charges or at least they used to be based on what postage service you paid for.

paid for the fastest delivery = you got reamed.

paid for 48hr or whatever they charged you the minimum which I think was £8 for rm and £12 for PF when they stung me

no idea how they got away with charging a higher customs handling charge depending on the speed of the original postage method

WuMyster · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:06

Burnsy2023 said:
£160 sounds about right. VAT alone is £24, plus import duty and handling charges.

How does a £500-£600 laptop get away with £120 charge then?

Pudney · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:08

Because VAT on a £500 item is £100.

WuMyster · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:26

Pudney said:
Because VAT on a £500 item is £100.

Then £160 doesnt make sense for £120 shoes?

Pudney · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:38

You said 160 was for everything, which sounds right if you include the cost of the shoes.

Surveyor · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:42

WuMyster said:
Then £160 doesnt make sense for £120 shoes?

There's no import duty to pay on a laptop so just 20% VAT and fees.

There are a lot of different classifications for shoes but generally they seem to attract import duty as well as VAT and fees.

Tummy · 7 Jun 2015 at 23:54

When I bought my GoRuck GR1 (£211.31) I had to pay £46.04 in import taxes.

WuMyster · 8 Jun 2015 at 00:01

Sorry, by everything, I meant all customs costs including handling fees.
£120 for the shoes and an extra £160.

spoffle · 8 Jun 2015 at 00:21

WuMyster said:
Sorry, by everything, I meant all customs costs including handling fees.
£120 for the shoes and an extra £160.

Well that's definitely not right.

memyselfandi · 8 Jun 2015 at 05:38

WuMyster said:
Sorry, by everything, I meant all customs costs including handling fees.
£120 for the shoes and an extra £160.

You are doing something wrong on the calculator if that is the case as you are not going to be charged 130+% of the value for the charges and fees.

Total cost would be item cost + shipping + vat + duty + handling fee ... with vat calculated on (item cost + shipping). As has been said I would expect the total including the item cost to be around the £160 mark.