Need to send a crate by air-freight, anyone done this before?

[mjt]

good lord, have you still not got your screen?

phone nissan HQ in japan and have a moan*

*first find a mate who speaks japanese

 

[Biohazard]

Well I don't know about UPS, but FedEx wanted 3 grand for door to door. I ended up contacting the UK branch of the Japanese shipping company (nnruk.com), and they wanted an extra £200 for the UK leg of the shipping, which is within the limits of the price my insurance said was ok.

The final issue I have now is that of VAT. If I were to arrange and fund the whole thing myself and then be reimbursed by the garage then effectively I would be selling the windscreen to my garage, however as prior to that it is a private purchase then apparently Customs will charge me the VAT and it wont be possible to claim it back.

Since my garage doesn't want to deal with Japan, I am assuming that the best option would be to pay for the Japanese side of the deal (Y87,000 + Y110,000) and have the garage reimburse me for that money, and then have the garage deal directly with the UK arm of NNR to pay for the customs clearance, VAT, duty and final leg of the delivery as a purely business to business transaction, that way VAT numbers can be given out and the bill paid just as if they'd bought from a UK company to begin with.

Anyone got any advice on this side of things?

Yup. Because you’re not a business, you can't claim any customs VAT back. The only way to claim VAT back on an import is to receive a C79 Vat certificate (a credit note essentially) and you use this to offset future liabilities. That’s useless for you, and you can't get one as you need a VAT number for Southend HMRC to be able to do anything.

Is the shipping from Japan a Japanese company? Do they have a UK arm? Ask your freight forwarder / agent / shipper if you can use their VAT number for the import, and if they would re-in burse you. Many will do this, it means you get your VAT back and they get the money appearing on a certificate. They lose a small amount of cash temporarily, but get happy customers.

Edit: Just re-read, yes approach your UK shipper and ask them to put their VAT number in the Consignee box. If not, find another.

 

[Destination]

178kgs is the volumetric weight, which is a measurement based entirely on the size of the crate and nothing at all to do with how heavy it is. The actual weight is 35-45 kg (estimated) but as the volumetric weight is the larger figure the actual weight is not used for calculating shipping costs.

If you think about it for a minute it makes sense, huge light objects can take up a lot of space on a plane or van so weight-based shipping charges mean you could lose money (say I wanted to courier 500 helium balloons across the country, if it were weight based than that would be free of charge, but they'd still have to put petrol in the van, right?)

Thank you for the explanation, I was rather baffled.

 

[[TW]Fox]

It it goes above £1500 I'll need to get further approval from the insurance.

Probably best you get them to write the car off especially given its low value and the fact you can pick up cheap QX's that are a bit newer for similar cash. This farce has obviously gone on too long, if it was a rare Ferrari fair enough....

Might be worth looking into?

You honestly want to go through this every time you get a stonechip on your windscreen? You do big miles, right? Heck in 1 year of doing 20k year alone I went through 2 windscreens.

 

[Lum]

Yes but the QX is a completely different car that just happens to look a little similar, it's FWD with an anaemic engine for a start.

For stonechips I don't care about the wait, plus I'll know what I'm doing next time, I'll just carry on driving it, besides my job is going to be changing quite soon, no more big miles.

 

[Lopéz]

178kgs is the volumetric weight, which is a measurement based entirely on the size of the crate and nothing at all to do with how heavy it is. The actual weight is 35-45 kg (estimated) but as the volumetric weight is the larger figure the actual weight is not used for calculating shipping costs.

If you think about it for a minute it makes sense, huge light objects can take up a lot of space on a plane or van so weight-based shipping charges mean you could lose money (say I wanted to courier 500 helium balloons across the country, if it were weight based than that would be free of charge, but they'd still have to put petrol in the van, right?)

I'm glad you understand this, there are thousands out there who don't!

 

[Lum]

Well it's all moot now. The insurance have turned around and said they want to wait for Nissan UK to get me the windscreen.

Oddly though, Nissan's estimate has changed from 4 months to 27th September, so maybe they found my original order, the one they have no record of, and are now showing a windscreen in stock.

Maybe I should get a template of it made up before it goes on the car, then at least I could get a polycarb one made up quickly if it happens again.