Royal mail have just asked me to pay a £12.69 customs fee for a £2 SD card

I dont think i have ever received an international parcel where i haven't had to challenge the import duty calculation. Its always wrong, in my experience.

You wont pay VAT on an item below £15 and you wont pay customs duty on anything below £135 (including shipping value).
 
EdwardTeach said:
I know this kind of thing will have happened to others on here in the past. I would be happy to pay if fee made any sense, but this is 6 times the value of the item.

Is it possible to challenge it?

Otherwise I will just leave the item, request a refund and order from a supplier definitely in the UK.
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It might be from a 'UK' supplier, but the item might have come from outside on the EU, but regardless of that you shouldn't have been charged import duties at all since it's below the charge threshold unless some braindead moron at processing didn't read the form correctly (or the declaration has been written incorrectly filled in).

You can get the money back from HMRC after paying for it (but I think you'll need evidence that the item was below the customs threshold).
 
Am i the only one interested in why the op didn't spend a bit more and get a better sd card?

Or am i the only one who doesnt recognise the validity of microsd cards with less than 64gb capacity
 
Not only that guys, but a lot of these Chinese imports are counterfeit. I.e. it'll be advertised as 64GB. The computer will also see it as ~64GB no probs, but when you open it up in Computer Management / Disk Management, it'll only show up as 2GB. Then if you try to write anything over 2GB to the drive, it will report as full or some other adverse effects i.e. write fails.
 
Pawnless Endgame said:
Not only that guys, but a lot of these Chinese imports are counterfeit. I.e. it'll be advertised as 64GB. The computer will also see it as ~64GB no probs, but when you open it up in Computer Management / Disk Management, it'll only show up as 2GB. Then if you try to write anything over 2GB to the drive, it will report as full or some other adverse effects i.e. write fails.
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And this is why the cheapest option fleabay has to offer is not always the best.

Don't do it people, memory cards are serious business!
 
Bear said:
Besides if it is so profitable, perhaps you should start a new business as a freight handling agent instead of earning peanuts working on railways
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lknYMh4.jpg
 
Glaucus said:
Rofl a few minutes, it won't take them any appreciable time, it'll be basically automated. And it's very much the same,

And that is why it is vastly over priced and unfair, it's for all intense and purposes unavoidable.
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This task isn't easily automated as incorrect declarations to HMRC will lead to penalties. It will need a human review, although systems can be in place to predict entries and code appropriately, e.g. "sample", "gift", "ipr" or the like.

Back in the day after uni when I did this job, my normal working day I'd do about 250 entries in roughly 8 hours, so about 1 every 2 minutes. Obviously that's an average so some were faster. At busy periods (Thanksgiving/Christmas) I could do about 100 an hour, not for the entire day but in bursts. I was one of the faster people in my location at the end (normally top 3 at worst - yes we were put into a "league table"!)

I did end up with RSI in my elbow from this though.
 
Tefal said:
I doubt this is the truth some how...
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Excise on cigarettes can get really high because part of the calculation is based off the number of cigarettes not the cost. Still, it'd be impressive to get above £2,000 unless they were being brought over by hand and the amount included penalties.

https://www.gov.uk/trade-tariff/commodities/2402209000#import

Third country duty 57.60 %
VAT standard rate 20.00 %
EXCISE 16.50 % + 189.49 GBP / 1000 p/st (that's £189.49 per 1,000 cigarettes)
 
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