RANT

[andy.l]

I've bought some things from America on ebay and requested shipping charges from the sellers,which for obvious reasons is considerably higher than US internal costs,anyway paid what the seller wanted only to be stung by 3 customs charges today,amounting to nearly £100,getting very pissed off with this now,seems you pay for shipping that you dont get :evil:

rant over

 

[Sam R]

what is the breakdown of the charges out of interest? Have bought a frame off ebay from Taiwan (from an "exotic" underwear seller :? ) have been told over phone that charges are £22.51. I think that I will have to collect from depot though which isn't what I've paid for

 

[andy.l]

dunno mate,its a lose lose situation for me as if i give them crap feedback on ebay then im bound to get it back and ive tried hard to keep my 100% pos feedback,even the guy at the post office said its getting quite common,they pocket your postage and say that collector will pay.

 

[neilll]

Customs charges seem a bit random and 'unfair' and I've only been caught twice in the last few months, once for a big bunch of handlebars and this week for a $50 Ti seatpost, the seatpost charges were something like £20 all in (there was a list of what it comprised of and the Post Office wouldn't let me collect until that was paid).

What IS weird though is that I've had much bigger stuff go straight thru, for example I bought a bunch of NOS rims from Jeff Archer @ First Flight and they came in a real big box and were clearly marked up and not a sausage.


Win some, lose some

 

[andy.l]

yes,it does seem that way

anyone buying from abroad,beware charges and that would probably work the other way aswell for people buying stuff from UK

 

[orange71]

rule of thumb - whatever you paid for abroad add 50% to final cost to allow for charges :roll:

 

[Elev12k]

Do I understand that you are angry on the seller because our customs charged dutys and VAT?

 

[xizang]

Customs charges seem a bit random and 'unfair' and I've only been caught twice in the last few months, once for a big bunch of handlebars and this week for a $50 Ti seatpost, the seatpost charges were something like £20 all in (there was a list of what it comprised of and the Post Office wouldn't let me collect until that was paid).

Win some, lose some

Same here. I've had a few boxes of goodies ($400 worth) through with charges and wouldn't be released until paid, then 3 weeks later the same order was delivered direct to my house with no charges :?
Win some lose some indeed.

 

[mc]

Deliveries in the UK seem to be very hit and miss. I send things to a friend over there all the time. It seems if they go Dhl/Ups they get hit with low duties and the import invoice is used to generate the value. However Dhl/Ups shipping usually runs $300+ even for boxes smaller than a wheel box.

On the other side when I ship to him using USPS the shipping is very cheap but the cutoms seem to be higher. On one occasion they even opened the box and argued that the values on the invoice were incorrect and they reassigned values to the items based on what they believed it to be worth(as if they have any idea of the value of bike parts). In the end it cost him over 400GBP in duties.

Also remember that the % of import duty varies with the country of origin of the item.

 

[tintin40]

http://www.retrobike.co.uk/forum/viewto ... highlight=

This was what was on my imported stuff from the USA. EU rules are different.
Also parcel force have different rules to the post office :roll: