Importing Speakers

cheechm

cheechm

cheechm

Associate
Joined
16 Jan 2008
Posts
2,350
Hi there,
You guys are usually great on this, so was wondering if you could give me some advice. If I were to buy both of these: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Electro-V...580?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5ae250cffc the total cost would come to USD$1227.28 or GBP£789.06.

To buy them in the UK would be about £1100. So what I'm wondering is how much will I actually pay to have them imported from the US (in terms of customs/VAT etc?)

Thanks
 
Well they use UPS so your customs charges will definitely be there, you won't know exactly how much until you receive the item and get an invoice from UPS.

I've had various stuff via them from the USA and the charges have varied from £50 on a camera lens to less on other electricals.

Basically, nobody can answer your question with an accurate figure :p
 
I'll be mildy suprised if it doesn't end up costing you atleast as much if not more after silly customs charges, etc.
 
you'll have to pay 20% VAT as well as 4.5% import duty. (i looked the Duty-rate up)
because it's coming in via a courier, you WILL get charged, and the courier will pay on your behalf and then invoice you after delivering the item. they may charge a fee for this.

that works out at ~£983 so still a saving, but not a big one. don't forget that you'll also be stuffed if you need to return them and you'll have to wait ages for them to arrive.
Importing from the US is rarely substantially cheaper unless you can either bring the item back with you and (illegally) not pay VAT and Duty or if the USD is substantially weaker than the pound (it isn't).

Long gone are the importation-glory days when it was $2:£1 *sigh*
 
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Re the fee, don't assume it'll be less than £20, some companies charge a percentage, with a minimum fee.

IIRC DHL charge residential customers something like £1.25, or 2.5% whichever is higher (or did the last time they charged me)
 
Werewolf said:
Re the fee, don't assume it'll be less than £20, some companies charge a percentage, with a minimum fee.

IIRC DHL charge residential customers something like £1.25, or 2.5% whichever is higher (or did the last time they charged me)
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last time i had something shipped by UPS there was no fee iirc... but that was five years ago. :)

post amended nonetheless :)
 
I have the same problem shopping in the US and getting the items to Singapore.

I use a service called Borderlinx which is set-up as a preferred DHL customer so they get bulk discounts for shipping and offer a local UK or US address for my purchases to go to before they come over to me. Catch on this one is it is for Citibank credit card holders only as you have to pay the shipping charges using this card.

Another one is Bongo but I have no experience of them. They do US to UK though with a local US shipping address. I would imagine there are also others if you look around. Some places (like OCUK) won't ship to an address that our credit card is not registered to (i.e. my UK Borderlinx address) and so some companies have set up a concierge service which will purchase for you with a local credit card then ship to you (after you have fully paid of course).

Size and weight are big factors and a set of speakers will probably be pretty expensive for shipping. I shipped an Antec ISK 310-150 mITX case from the US to Singapore and the shipping cost as much as buying the case in the first place. Buying an OEM card (ie. a network card no big box) costs me around 10 quid shipping from the US to Singapore, same for SSDs and the like. It seems there is also a min charge so sometimes it is better to calculate a number of items (a lot of sites have cost estimators) and see if the price jumps or stays the same (ie. 3 Blurays a time is best for me).

RB
 
Ok here is another one. If I buy them new from the US they cost $600 each, so around £390. My dad would bring them back for me into the UK as he is frequently in the US. Given that you're allowed £300 allowance (he goes that often that I'll have them in less than 3 weeks if he brings them back 1 at a time), how much would I end up paying in taxes and stuff? Because surely only £85 would be taxed?
cheers

EDIT: Seems that I lie and the allowance is £390. Therefore he could bring it in absolutely tax free etc?
 
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It's worked out as a percentage of value Iirc, I paid about 20 import tax on an item I bought for somewhere between 100-120 quid, from Canada. FedEx sent the invoice separate though, and I didn't pay it because they didn't Chase it up after the original invoice.

I did ask the company if they could send it as a gift to avoid an import fee, but they declined, citing that warranty would not apply if they were to do that.
 
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cheechm said:
Ok here is another one. If I buy them new from the US they cost $600 each, so around £390. My dad would bring them back for me into the UK as he is frequently in the US. Given that you're allowed £300 allowance (he goes that often that I'll have them in less than 3 weeks if he brings them back 1 at a time), how much would I end up paying in taxes and stuff? Because surely only £85 would be taxed?
cheers

EDIT: Seems that I lie and the allowance is £390. Therefore he could bring it in absolutely tax free etc?
Click to expand...

He could bring it back as a gift, so I think you would just have the weight to worry about in terms of cost
 
I've imported stuff using ups and they sent me an invoice through the mail for the tax. I ignored it :D

Maybe they let me off because they sent it to the wrong place and took the **** and had opened it...
 
mattyfez said:
FedEx sent the invoice separate though, and I didn't pay it because they didn't Chase it up after the original invoice.
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:rolleyes:
I'm surprised that they didn't chase you up for this. I hope that if you ever try to use FedEx again they hold your package until you pay + interest.
fyi, couriers always send the Tax invoice after delivering the consignment.
 
Aod said:
:rolleyes:
I'm surprised that they didn't chase you up for this. I hope that if you ever try to use FedEx again they hold your package until you pay + interest.
fyi, couriers always send the Tax invoice after delivering the consignment.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised they haven't passed it on to their collections department (I had that with one bill due to them failing to address the bill properly so I never received it but it was sorted out in the end).

I would disagree with your last statement though; in my experience with the packages I've had:

Fedex - Bill (badly/incorrectly) afterwards.
DHL - Bill before delivery.
UPS - Demanded the bill was paid on delivery.
Parcel Force - Bill before delivery.

Hint to couriers, if you are going to bill me before delivery then make it so I can from a link on the order tracking instead of having to wait for an invoice to arrive with another reference number on it. Surely it can't be that difficult to do that.
 
Aod said:
fyi, couriers always send the Tax invoice after delivering the consignment.
Click to expand...

They may invoice after but don't assume they won't demand payment upfront.

When I used to work at FedEx we had to collect the charges on all items over £250. But I was lazy and made others do it.
 
memyselfandi said:
I'm surprised they haven't passed it on to their collections department (I had that with one bill due to them failing to address the bill properly so I never received it but it was sorted out in the end).

I would disagree with your last statement though; in my experience with the packages I've had:

Fedex - Bill (badly/incorrectly) afterwards.
DHL - Bill before delivery.
UPS - Demanded the bill was paid on delivery.
Parcel Force - Bill before delivery.

Hint to couriers, if you are going to bill me before delivery then make it so I can from a link on the order tracking instead of having to wait for an invoice to arrive with another reference number on it. Surely it can't be that difficult to do that.
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Parcel farce don't count, they've gotta get their £13/26/9,000 rape-fee in there too, so if they don't hold your package to ransom no-one would pay it :p

In my experience i've always been billed after but these were usually quite small amounts :)

Pudney said:
They may invoice after but don't assume they won't demand payment upfront.

When I used to work at FedEx we had to collect the charges on all items over £250. But I was lazy and made others do it.
Click to expand...

fair enough :)
 
Aod said:
Parcel farce don't count, they've gotta get their £13/26/9,000 rape-fee in there too, so if they don't hold your package to ransom no-one would pay it :p
Click to expand...

Why single them out ... all of the couriers will have some form of fee, of the same order as Parcel Force, on top of the actual charges.
 
I've just bought a gcard from the states (it's hard to get)

Through the rainforest place.com

Total cost was £115 but £30 of that is a customs charge so that's about 35% on top of the cost of the card and shipping.

Apparently if they get any change leftover from customs I can have that back.
 
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