Customs charges

Ripper

Ripper

Ripper

Soldato
Joined
25 Jan 2003
Posts
11,571
Location
Newark, Notts
Anyone know how they work this out? I had a card through the post today stating that I had to pay £11.96 to recieve an item I paid £29 for. Seems harsh to me!

I can either pay it an get the item, or leave it and lose £29. I obviously don't want to lose £29, but I also wasn't desperate for this item and don't fancy paying the extra to get it :(
 
you have to pay the extra.
next time get things labelled as a gift and the reported value being less :p
 
Its off ebay from the USA. The guy has had plenty of English buyers so I guess I just got unlucky?
 
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you will probably be paying a nice little admin fee that the cheeky ******* add on when they have to charge you, as well as the VAT
 
Actually, a "new" thing is happening around the country where people are suing the post office for holding the item at "ransom" if you don't pay the fee.

As

postal service who holds a package and refuses to hand it over without payment of customs charges and Royal Mail handling fees, is (according to them) breaking the law under the Postal Services Act of 2000 sections 104, 105, 83 and 84, and the Criminal Law Act:

Apparently it states that postal services are not allowed to retain packages/mail by virtue of a lien.
Click to expand...

Long thread here

http://www.volkszone.com/VZi/showthread.php?t=351900

and another thread here

http://www.thedvdforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=505742&highlight=illegal

Lots to read it to sum it up it basically states that the Post Office cannot hold the package to ransom, they have to give it to you and any charges that you refuse to pay they would have to pursuit it through civil courts. They are still entitle to the fee you owe and they can still bill you but it is illegal for them to hold your package because you haven't pay the fee.

The good news with regard to the £18 limit is that come 1st Decemeber it will be raised to 150 euros, about £118 !!!! Woopeedoo !

http://www.britishgaming.co.uk/?p=363

More offical document

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:085:0001:0002:EN:PDF
 
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Re the limit going up, I've got a feeling that is only for the duty part of any fees, not the VAT componant - so far i've not found anyone who can say with a degree of certainty (it reads as Duty ro my untrained eye, and a number of others seem to think the same).

[edit]
Has anyone actually confirmed what it means with HMRC?
 
You are being charged for the convenience of the item clearing via the Parcelforce deferment account.

As far as I remember from my studies on Import/Export the sender has to specifically instruct the courier if he does not want this to happen, thus allowing you to undertake customs clearance yourself.

I'll check my reference stuff. What Parcelforce (and other couriers) are doing is not necessarily "illegal" - as they are not the Post Office they don't have to conform to the Postal Services Act (IIRC) which I believe applies to Royal Mail only.
 
Werewolf said:
Re the limit going up, I've got a feeling that is only for the duty part of any fees, not the VAT componant - so far i've not found anyone who can say with a degree of certainty (it reads as Duty ro my untrained eye, and a number of others seem to think the same).

[edit]
Has anyone actually confirmed what it means with HMRC?
Click to expand...

Sorry I don't quite understand that.. can you rephrase a little?

Or perhaps I'm getting tired :( :p
 
The limit going up could just apply to the Duty part of the taxes (at the moment we pay VAT and Duty).
If so we would still get charges for items over the £18 limit, but under £118 we wouldn't get Duty, just the VAT part.

Basically I'm not getting my hopes up too high until i've got confirmation it's being applied to both import duty, and VAT, as it needs to apply to both for it to make a real difference for us.
 
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