Internationl help again, need advice!

[LadySatine]

 

You guys...ugh! I don't understand what is happening. I sent someone a custom pony to the UK, $13.50. Now she has messaged me today saying she is being charged another 12 pounds to be able to pick up her package. I think she wants me to pay this fee. Is this my fault, do I pay this fee? Or is this a customs fee that she should be paying for the goods she bought? I want to do the right thing here, but I don't want to be screwed out of money either. So what is right? Please help.

[Skeen]

If it's the Customs fee then you, as the seller, are not responsible for it.  I can't imagine what they'd be charging her that much for otherwise! 

[LadySatine]

Thank you Skeen. I have no idea! She sent me a picture of the slip she got and it shows an 8 pound customs fee, then the total is 12.24 pounds. Should I tell her I won't pay the custom fee, but maybe pay whats left?

[Taffeta]

This is one of those ongoing issues of sale etiquette that goes round in circles but the correct legal position is that:

The seller puts the actual value of the item on the custom form
If it is over a certain amount the importing country can charge a custom fee
The person responsible for it is the buyer.

Of course there are shades of grey involved here, too. What determines the commercial value of an item is generally disputed although, again, legally, it is the price paid.

Sometimes people ask to have things marked as gift. Legally, this is not a good idea for something that's been purchased as a commercial item. I tend to tick other on the custom form these days because what I am sending is second hand and thus not commercial, but it is not a gift, unless it is a gift...

Gift packages still can get charged. Since the recession the ratio of charged parcels has risen exponentially.

For the UK, the threshold is something like £18. That's about $25 or just above on the current horrific exchange rate. It;s not actually a custom fee but more handling and VAT. We get to pay the people who handle parcels extra money for doing their job, which is handling parcels, and for which we already paid a postage fee in order to cover the...handling of our parcel.

I can live with VAT but yeah, I have issues with handling charges. The £8 in this case will be handling, not import duty.

£8 means its Royal Mail, which is preferable. Parcel Force's handling charges are even worse.

People in the US are lucky they don't have to deal with this whole custom fee business, since, honestly, what kind of 'commercial value' and 'VAT' are they losing out on when someone imports a pony of some kind?

While the buyer is liable for the cost and not the seller, I personally have a twitch with sellers who put in their auctions, 'its your problem'. Yes, it is our problem - but they can still be nicer, or at least neutral, about it . I've had some sellers who have marked up the value to what they think it should be worth, based on website estimate prices, as opposed to what I paid for it. That is also illegal, incidentally - as the price value that matters with second hand items is the price paid.

Our customs also can't tell the difference between US $ and NZ$. I have twice had parcels from NZ marked up because they valued them at $US rate even though the custom form clearly said $NZ.

[xeevee]

She was charged vat.  If you marked the price correctly, and as a sale (if that's what it was) you have obeyed the law. It is her charge to pay.  If it was an eBay sale it literally would have said that when she committed to buy.

[LadySatine]

Thank you Taffeta. I think I have it figured out with the buyer. I agreed to pay for half of the fee to help out/make her happy. She was thankful for the offer.

As for the charge to begin with, I think it's because the custom pony was valued at $28, and that's what I put on the form. And now that I think of it, any of my very valuable customs have been sent to places in the US and not worldwide, so that could be why we were hit with this for the first time.

So now in the future, how do I label them on the form? Do I remain honest and mark it what I charged, and have this possibly happen again, or do I state what it costs for the original pony, which is $5? Ugh seller woes, lol! Of course I will do the honest thing. :p

Thanks xeevee. Yes I have obeyed the law this time. Lol

[xeevee]

You know that dress I posted a photo of on Facebook?  Gypsy sent that to me as a gift marked at $50.  Which wasn't wrong.  Still got hit with £28 in import fees. 

[LadySatine]

That crap just stinks though! It really bums me out.

[pinkkittywinks]

No, you don't pay the fee. Not ever. Even on eBay it is against their rules to ask a seller to cover the import fees/VAT duty.

Import fees, VAT and taxes are the responsibility of the person who is buying the item. All of the information is there on Royal Mail and HMRC's website

Customs total up the value of the item (stated on the custom form you filled in) and the cost of shipping. Anything over £20 usually means you have to pay VAT plus an £8 handling fee (which tends to be the bulk of the cost).

In my experience, 90% of the time packets get through customs without a charge, but occasionally I have to pay a fee.

And don't let someone talk you into writing a false value of a custom form so it avoids custom fees as it is illegal (as in the law) to do so

Love pkw xxx

[LadySatine]

Thanks pkw. This was a private sale through Facebook, so I didn't have any of these things stated. But being from that country, I would have expected her to know these things, and to not make the seller feel responsible. I probably shouldn't have even paid for half, but I wanted a happy customer.

[Taffeta]

What PKW says. It's annoying and we hate it. But the person to blame is not the seller, so long as the seller is pricing the custom form exactly as they sold it. In this case, if the item was $28, what's actually happened is the fault of the referendum on the EU.

What I mean is that since this was announced, our currency has dropped against the dollar.
$28 is currently £20.11. I just checked. As I said, the threshold is £18. Yeah, this is really petty, it;s a tiny difference but they have the right to charge it because it's over.

Before, $28 was approximately £17.50. JUST UNDER the threshold. So you can see that while your value of your item has not changed, the value of the £ against the $ has. And that's not your fault, or hers, it's just the way things currently are. And probably why the fee came as a surprise to her, because most of us are still adjusting to the new and horrible exchange rate.

And why I'm not buying in $ unless it's something exceptional for the forseeable future.

So yeah, mark your customs as exactly the price you sold them for. Do not tick gift unless it is a gift. The charges are annoying but it's not right to expect you to break the law.

Mind you, HMRC + Royal Mail fee or Parcelforce fee is still better than Global shipping;s estimate of fees on ebay. Amazon.jp also pre-charge you for customs and such like, but they do refund you the exact difference when the parcel has been sent. They therefore only charge you, in the long run, what they have been charged to ensure your parcel cleared customs okay. Global Shipping charge over and keep the difference.

If you view an auction with global shipping enacted you quickly see how inflated the estimates are compared with HMRC's actual charges, even considering Royal Mail or Parcelforce's handling.

A recent auction I saw at $500 was suggesting an additional $280 for customs and import. This is on top of the shipping cost, not including it.

I have only once had a lot of very rare MIP items come with a value higher than that. My custom import duty was less than a third of that $280. Thus Global Shipping is the true enemy of the pony collector in the UK - not the honesty of a seller on a custom form when that seller is going to the trouble of posting internationally.

[pinkkittywinks]

Not everyone knows about or understands import fees if they don't buy from overseas a lot. They often get a shock and blame the seller it's not your fault and as I said before it's the buyers responsibility.

It might be a good idea to state that you are not responsible for import fees or duty

I completely understand why you paid half you wanted to ease the shock.

Links for you, she will have. had the card and if she visited the website it's explained there. I'm sure the folks at the PO would explain it as well.

https://www.royalmail.com/personal/receiving-mail/pay-a-fee

What it says on the HMRC website

https://www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/overview

I once worked for a worldwide mail order company, so I had to learn it all!

Love pkw xxx

[LadySatine]

Taffeta, yes, I do believe that is what the problem is. She is not used to the change, possibly. Then it also came to mind that maybe I haven't had the problem before is because the buyers have just paid this and expected it, therefor not bothering to contact the seller/me. So that makes a lot of sense, thank you for explaining all of that. I had no idea UK's end had also changed things.

Pkw, she said she will be talking to her post about it, so hopefully they will explain everything to her as it should be. Who knows, maybe she'll refund what I paid her. Either way, I'm glad she and I were able to work it all out.

Thanks everyone, you've all been a great help to me! <3

[mskittylovesrobin]

Hello everyone, I bought a $25 pony from the US and was given a customs fees to pay which is £11.50 I forgot all about this and been buying a load of stuff from the US last week... Bye bye money  anyway... one of the items I purchased is $150  which means I would have to pay 20% of that value + £8 right?! Sigh I have to definitely stop buying for awhile until my pockets recover  lol xxx

[Ringlets]

mskittylovesrobin  ..yep unfortunately if the seller marks the value on the customs form correctly then you are going to get hit hard on the $150 purchase    .  I've had it happen to me quite a lot of times as well... had to pay out over £100 in customs fees for one dolly purchase last year   A few times I've ended up paying more on fees than the item was actually worth too!  * @ UK Customs and the PO handling charge*
 You'll just have to wait and see how the person marked the customs form- sometimes they get through , it just depends on how they valued and described it.