Buying from Overseas On-line

My daughter ordered a t-shirt from a US company that sells things for a charity, we got a card pushed through the door saying that there was an outstanding Customs and VAT payment due on it of £3.81, which is reasonable, but then Royal Mail charged us an additional £8 handling charge! Un-believable! So we had to pay £11.81 just to get a parcel that was already paid for! Watch out for this, anything over £15 is liable to customs charge but, why Royal Mail charge for it as well is not on!

Re: Buying from Overseas On-line

Couldn't agree more, few years ago I bought a book it cost about 3 times what I paid for it in the end. Didn't realise when I ordered it how much that would cost.

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Thanks for the info Twiz - so far I've not ordered from abroad - don't think I will .........

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I have purchased things on Etsy ( Bosnia Herzegovina and Tangiers ) and haven't had any trouble with customs so far

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I'm afraid this is a very old and well known chestnut so sorry you were caught out by it, but TBH even a casual bit of research about buying from abroad would have forewarned you what to expect.

T-Shirts in particular are often just not worth it because of all the handling/shipping and customs charges. The US companies can't do anything about it, it's out of their hands. If they were upfront and honest they would state clearly that international orders WILL incur additional charges which they are not liable for. Usually such info is tucked away in a different part of the website. Your best bet for finding out reality for this and anything similar is to Google for "forums" concerning your situation.

e.g. Google "International T-shirt charges forum"

The 2nd item returned is entitled "Got stung by Customs" so off you go.

You will nearly always get a customs charge tagged on for certain purchases. The additional "handling charges" you get are a result of skulduggery by the site you are buying from.

International sites will happily quote and charge you for international shipping. What they then actually do is get the parcel over the sea to Blighty and then just throw it into the Royal Mail stream which for them is far cheaper than organising a courier. It's a bit like making a return phone call or sending an important letter to your friend and not putting a stamp on it.

Really the retailer you are buying from should be paying ALL postal costs end-to-end, but that makes their profits prohibitive and having to put high postal charges upfront on their website doesn't help sales does it. So the unscrupulous simply keep the "fine detail" in the Shipping/Delivery section of the website, are vague about what might happen, perhaps saying you might get a handling charge instead of saying you WILL get one and it WILL be in the order of £x.xx etc.

All this in mind, it doesn't mean we should not buy from abroad. You can make some fantastic savings that way. You just need to be clued up on what ALL the charges are likely to be. Some years ago I ordered a custom set of hybrid golf clubs with graphite shafts, full set with irons, metal woods, wedges, putter etc. Cost just $300 or thereabouts which is peanuts compared to a custom set here.

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I've never ordered from the USA, but I've recently bought things on-line from Germany with no problems or unexpected charges. Also had the bonus of a good exchange rate.

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I didn’t think you’d have to pay VAT on goods from the USA Twiz, I thought you all had a “Special Relationship” with them.

I’ve starting to buy stuff from China over the last six months, the prices are fantastically low and the goods have been great so far, I only use their free post offers (postage is taken into account for VAT) and keep all my purchases below 21 euros which is free of VAT and other charges, I have had to pay the taxes on two occasions when I bought articles for 50 euros and 60 euros, they also have 7 euros handling charge here from the post office added on, since then I stick to under 21euros worth of goods per transaction and I've never had any problems since

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There is a bit of an argument here because personally imported goods under $1000 (£500) do not attract GST(VAT) - we have no import duty as we are basically a free trade country.

Local retailers complain that it is not a level playing field after having charged outrageous markups for years. Fortunately nothing has been done about it yet, the counter argument is that costs more to collect the GST on these goods than the tax involved.

Buying goods from China is brilliant.

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So is buying DVDs and books from amazon.uk compared with Australian prices. A couple of years ago I bought the complete box set of Rumpole with 15 discs for £13 which included postage. Books I can't get here anywhere are often 1p plus postage. Long may it continue to be GST free.

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It wasn't so much the customs I was annoyed about it was the £8 Royal Mail charged for "handling"!