UK Customs Charges *tears hair out*

[Vintergatan]

Vintergatan do you know what the limit is in Iceland? I'm about to send a parcel over so I'll make sure I mark it correctly

Basically, the way it´s supposed to work here is that they won't charge you anything if the parcel is marked as gift of up to 10 000 isk in value (that's ~$80). However, they will often refuse to accept that something is a gift, which is the biggest problem! They even go as far as to open all packages and decide on their own if it´s a gift and how much it's worth :S I had them open my packages and see messages inside "thanks for the trade/purchase" and refuse to treat it as a gift :S

so basically, don't mention any such thing anywhere, mark it as a gift and put low value. Apparently, putting colourful stickers and such helps as well.

that's as much as you can do as a sender, the rest is up to us here ^^

[kCherry]

Wow, I just feel so badly for you guys who have to pay such ridiculous fees to build your toy collection! I wish that there was something that could be done to reinstate the sanity in the postal services.

[RockinPrettyBeats]

The £8 isn't customs fees. It's Royal Mail handling fees. 


I had a 50 cent pony shipped from the US to the UK. They misread the .50 as 50 and decided that as it was worth $50, they'd slap fees on it. I had to pay about £12 to get the parcel including £8 handling fees and never got a refund.

So it's not customs it's royal handling fees?

Maybe this is a stupid question but why would the price of the item matter for handling fees? It's not like it makes the job harder right?

[pinkkittywinks]

RM have an £8 admin and handling fee, this is on top of the customs fee's
daffy had to pay £12 in customs fee's (tax etc) for the "$50" or what customs thought was a "$50" item as well as the £8 admin/handling fee.

Very very good to know. I will be keeping that in mind when I ship out packages to the UK. Not that I like lying or anything but a few dollar fib won't hurt anyone.

it is illegal to put a false ammount on the customs form, i know we are almost all guilty of doing it though

if the packet gets lost and you try and claim back the value for the lost item they will ask what the declared customs value is, you cannot claim for a $50 item that was marked as $5 on the customs form ~ i think that is right anyway!

love pkw xxx

[Sarah-Bee]

PKW is right, it is illegal and you would only be able to claim the amount stated on the form... BUT if it's not tracked and the only way to tell what you declared is on a MISSING item then you revert to PayPal/Ebay/Emails for proof of cost so there's a way round it if it's not tracked *is not dodgy, honest *

[RockinPrettyBeats]

pinkkittywinks - Here in the USA packages aren't insured unless you pay for priority mail international. Which is almost never worth it and most buyers will never pay that much money to ship a pony or barbie.

But I'm still confused with the 8bp handing fee. It's based off the value of the item right? If so, what does it matter how much the item is worth. It doesn't make the package larger or heavier right?

[hathorcat]

pinkkittywinks - Here in the USA packages aren't insured unless you pay for priority mail international. Which is almost never worth it and most buyers will never pay that much money to ship a pony or barbie.

But I'm still confused with the 8bp handing fee. It's based off the value of the item right? If so, what does it matter how much the item is worth. It doesn't make the package larger or heavier right?

"Handling fee" is always the same at the £8 its only the customs charge that varies depending on the item value - so even if you are only £2 in a customs charge you will still have the additional £8 to pay over and above that. Handling fee is basically an Admin charge - the parcel company or Royal Mail charge you for the fact they have had to send out a letter telling you you need to pay customs, the parcel company or Royal Mail also then need to process your customs charge back to HMRC [i.e. Customs] - all this is what they claim the £8 is for.

Oh the Royal Mail are notorious for handling fees...if someone posts you a letter and perhaps the stamp falls off...instead of simply charging you the 46p for your letter [i.e. you pay the stamp price] they hit you with a "handling" fee of about £1 on top of it as well simply because they had to send you a letter to tell you you had a letter without the correct price on it...lol

[FantasticFirefly]

RockinPrettyBeats, no- the "handling fee" it's not based on a % of value at all. That's a flat fee.

 We have a handling fee too. I've only ever gotten one on things I've paid customs on, at least here, it's not applied every time you pay customs. sometimes though. I was told it was a charge because customs had to either open, or otherwise process my parcel. Here it's an extra $5 on top of whatever else if you're the "lucky" winner.  (Customs is 12% of the Canadian $ value. in this province)

[Baby Sugarberry]

Yeah, there's a 8.50$ charge on top of the taxes and duty up here, that's one reason I rarely buy ponies over 20$ value.  I do not mind paying tax, I *do* take exception to the ridiculous processing fees.  Almost an hour's wages just to process one payment? >_o

[FantasticFirefly]

What? Wow, the last time I was charged that fee I was living in Ontario, and it used to be $5!

[Baby Sugarberry]

Yeah, it went up recently, to 8$ or 8.50$, can't recall which. I remember it being 5$ too, and even then that was pretty high.

[NoDivision]

The problem I am having is that I really don't want my UK pony friends to get slapped with huge fees, especially when it's a gift, but on the other hand, if I am sending a package that really does include a lot of quite valuable items I don't want to take the risk of marking it low and it getting lost...

Swap packages, for example. I hate to think of my swap partner having to pay extra money to receive a gift. But if the box goes missing and I've marked it as worth $20 or something, then we both lose out D: I don't know what to do.

[AubadePrism]

THREE customs charges adding up to £100? I live with my wife who is a gothic lolita, and our last customs charge was £102 for her stuff.

The amount we've spent on customs over the last year is about £350.

For some reason anything coming from Japan is instantly grabbed by customs and given a HUGE charge. The last package was just a little sweater and a skirt. It's strange that we'd buy £200 from Taobao and not get a customs charge for it, but a $30 Pokemon plush sent from Japan got a £50 customs charge.

Personally I think it's ridiculous that we have to pay customs on something we've already paid expensive shipping prices over, and i've had to resort to asking sellers to mark down the value to avoid having to pay more. Sure I know that's illegal, but I think charging extra should be illegal. I didn't have to deal with this in America. Why should I pay £100 for customs on one dress that was already overpriced due to it being a brand name?

[pinkkittywinks]

pinkkittywinks - Here in the USA packages aren't insured unless you pay for priority mail international. Which is almost never worth it and most buyers will never pay that much money to ship a pony or barbie.

i didn't know that, it is different in the uk.

any packet you send regular mail, that is no tracking or added insurance is automatically insured for the value of £42 GBP so long as it is not jewellery, cash or vouchers. however if you send something worth more than the £42 in the regular mail and it gets lost you only get the £42 back.

love pkw xxx

[mercynova]

Urgh, don't get me started!