Royal Mail must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of us exiting the EU customs union.
Well that's an interesting comment seeing as Royal Mail are not making enough money...
Royal Mail - £8 admin fee for customs charge?
- Thread starter Gimpymoo
- Start date
Well that's an interesting comment seeing as Royal Mail are not making enough money...
He said he was expecting a hit but didn't get one, so not very good then I guess
Caporegime
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Not sure if anyone know. Some companies will bill you afterwards, like FedEx, and with FedEx, if you email them saying in the lines of "i am happy to pay the tax that I am owe but I find handling my parcel with this inflated admin charge excessive when the service of the delivery is already paid for in full…etc". They often waive the fee. I've done it multiple times, actually have 100% success rate (tried 3 times, worked 3 times). I once did it with DHL afterwards as I had to pay it Cash on Delivery to the driver at the door.
It's much harder to haggle with RM however.
It's much harder to haggle with RM however.
This. I don't think legally they have a leg to stand on in charging the admin fee so that is dropped straight a way after an email explaining you wont be paying it - i have done this a few times like yourself. Obviously you have to pay the tax.
I haven't been in this position with Royal Mail though.
Soldato
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What I find unfair is that the shipping cost counts towards the final item price. So if the item is $20 (below the threshold) and the shipping is $15, it totals $35 which brings it over the customs threshold and you have to pay customs on both the $20 and the $15.
Well I got my card.
Item (guitar effects pedal was) ~£140. Shipped from the US.
Anyone care to guess the charge?
Caporegime
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Soldato
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20% of £140, 20% of the shipping cost (the unfair part), plus admin, depending on how you're paying the customs charge. If via eBay, then there is no admin - just straight customs which is calculated at checkout.
For whatever it is worth, you don't actually have to pay the tax, as tax is no longer due after the courier deals with it.
When a courier sends you a bill, it means they have already paid the tax, so you are reimbursing them for it. That's how they internally justify the handling fee as well.
I had hassle with Parcel Force and UPS over it. They were for different reasons, but Parcel Force wouldn't remove the handling fee of £13.
They literally said "it's all or nothing." So I chose nothing, and left with my parcel. They didn't like that one so much, but they have no comeback on it from the border agency, because as far as they're concerned, the tax has been paid.
Trouble is, this isn't a solution. As you don't get your parcel before paying. Someone messed up and you gained.
I did it twice with Parcel Force within about a week. The reason they gave me the parcel the second time was because I knew my rights, and the guy at the depot couldn't keep up his lies as to why I had to pay the fees, why he couldn't give me my parcel, and why the border agency and police were coming to get me.
Seems you are half right after some googling
They can't with old the package, however you are liable for the fees including handling charge. If they wanted to they could have gone down civil case through small claims and made you pay.
- If your item had insufficient postage or no stamps attached, a flat-rate fee will be charged as follows:
- Letters/Large Letters - no postage paid - £2 flat fee
- Letters/Large Letters - insufficient postage paid - £1.50 flat fee
- Small Parcel - underpaid/no postage paid - £3 flat fee
- Medium Parcel - underpaid/no postage paid - £1.50 plus incremental postage rounded to the nearest 10 pence
- If your item has had a Customs charge applied it will include a handling fee of £8.00
- ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Mailman didn’t ask me for any excess, then I figured that if anyone was out any money, it would be Deutsche Post.
I texted my kid and told him the situation, he said sometimes the Postamt doesn’t have the correct stamp, so they write it on.
I said, “I can understand the Postamt Franking it, but what’s to stop everyone writing it on the envelope.”
He said, “This is Germany Dad not England, it’s not full of angels, but we don’t have the chavs that you have.”
Nope - too low
£44.70.
GBP price was £145.18.
They've probably followed your formula in a voodoo way. For example, shipping was free, but for the purpose of the calculation they must have added it on at 20%. I still can't make out how thats £44.70 but ho hum.
Soldato
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Fedex have always been the absolute worse for me ...
- threatening me with debt collectors for a bill I had never received as they were incapable of posting it to memyselfandi, companyname, address as per the package and instead just sent it to companyname, address which was sent back by the company post room as not specifically addressed ... despite Fedex being told many many times they were doing it wrong.
- sending a bill which had the original documentation and their calculation attached. The original bill clearly showed the item cost and shipping cost. Their calculation took these and then randomly added £50 shipping cost (pulled out their bottom I assume as it didn't exist on the original bill) and then did calculations on the new total figure. This was challenged successfully.
Had quite a few RM ones recently where the tax was <£4 and the admin fee was of course a lot more than that, along with some PF £12 ones (with several more likely incoming).
At least with DHL from Amazon JP you mostly get to prepay Customs charges so you skip the admin fee (and get little refunds when they find you have paid to much) ... that and even with Japanese media costs a CD single with slow shipping does come under the threshold (but not by much) so ordering several it works out cheaper to ship them separately (not from Amazon as they only use DHL and don't do slow shipping) and make RM work for their money by having to deliver multiple items instead of one.
Soldato
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I've had similar and that was with the Post Office, Think twice before ordering outside the EU and even that won't be an option much longer.