Royal Mail handling fee/customs charges

[timbo72]

Ok so today when i got home from work i found a nice little card from Royal Mail. Ive been charged 3.81 customs and.............an 8 pound handling charge. Just 11.81 to pay but most of that is this 'handling charge'


The question is (if it's already been asked i apologise in advance).......What do i get for my payment of 8 pounds??????

 

[tundra9]

You pay for them filling out the forms! :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[jedi_masters]

Tim I work for Royal Mail and i'll be honest with you and say **** all. They have to pay the charge up front to get the item released to us to then get the item to you. I havent a clue where they get £8 from for doing this. It used to be £4 years ago. The worst is ParcelForce, they charge either £11 or £13.50 depending on how the item was posted.

 

[threaders]

Customs charges teand to end up with three amonts to pay. A handling fee by customs, VAT fee amd a clearance fee. I imported an 80's bmx in from the sates a month ago and got sutng proper on that
The way round it, is if the seller can mark it gift and state value at under £30, you won get charged

 

[Ukgarisson]

There is a way to,reclaim any vat or customs charges as they charge at 20% and as we are sourcing historical collectible items it should only be 5%. I remember reading a very helpful thread explaining the deal with this.

Thx

 

[Dark Sith Lord]

Are you referring to this thread - http://www.starwarsforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=8373

 

[lee gray]

What I hate is when you have paid lots for postage for fast delivery and customs get it and in parcels forces case not only have you got to wait for it to clear from customs but then they send you a second class letter telling you its been held until you pay which takes 3-4 days to arrive.

 

[edd_jedi]

What I hate is when you have paid lots for postage for fast delivery and customs get it and in parcels forces case not only have you got to wait for it to clear from customs but then they send you a second class letter telling you its been held until you pay which takes 3-4 days to arrive.

If you watch the tracking it usually sits at 'awaiting customs charging' for at least a week, where as if you declare under $30 it breezes through customs in a couple of hours. It really is stupid - they expect you to wait longer and pay more. It's a bit like the film industry expecting you to wait longer and go to more effort to pay for a film instead of downloading it. People will HAPPILY pay more to get something faster. They will NOT happily pay more and then wait longer. It makes no sense. So people will continue to evade customs fees, download illegal films etc until these retards realise this.

 

[Chrome_Jedi]

LMFAOOL @ ^^^^^^^^^! I agree 100% with your logic Edd!

 

[PGowdy]

Anyone else realised having the value marked at under $50 doesn't stop you getting customs charges anymore?
Paid for 3 this week. :x :x
The new rules say that anything over £15 and you get charged 20% of item value, shipping AND the mysterious £8 "handling" fee.
Really ****ing sucks. Getting harder and harder to do business via the states.

 

[tiefighterboy]

So basically anything from states marked with a value of over $30.00...you get ****ed on? I told the guy at the post office here that you guys get taxed on the shipping price, in addition to the value of the item and he **** his pants. This is one thing we do not have over here..well..not yet.

 

[PGowdy]

And don't forget the £8 handing fee. :lol:

Yeah, you have to mark things as gift now AND a low value or you will get charged.

The thing is, if they were more reasonable and honest in their charges i would just pay them and they would earn a fortune out of me. But all they're doing is forcing us to find more ways to NOT pay them a dime. If i did it all legit my bill this month alone would be well over £200. As it is i've given them about £30 (and that's only cos they changed their rules and got me. Won't happen again). I'm the Jimmy Carr of the vintage collecting world. :wink:

 

[itfciain]

Anyone else realised having the value marked at under $50 doesn't stop you getting customs charges anymore?
Paid for 3 this week. :x :x
The new rules say that anything over £15 and you get charged 20% of item value, shipping AND the mysterious £8 "handling" fee.
Really ****ing sucks. Getting harder and harder to do business via the states.

Does that include those marked as gift Pete ? I normally get mine marked as a git at $35 - looks like I might have to drop it to $20 !

 

[PGowdy]

As said above, if you mark as 'gift' and a value under £40 then you should be ok. I've not asked for things to be marked as gift just low value and i've been fine for over a year. Just this month they've started to hold packages and send me a bill. So stuff marked at a value of £28 i'm getting a £16 bill for. Tehiving c**ts. (the fact that those packages are actually worth well over $500 is neither here nor there. :lol: )

 

[tundra9]

We're fortunate here in Norway that parcels marked as gift with a value up to £100 should go right through...
Although that's not always the case, when they do make the mistake of charging gifts up to £100
we have to send them an e-mail with receipts and we only get part of the payment back, not the
handling fee...And that could take up to a month until it gets processed...

 

[tiefighterboy]

As said above, if you mark as 'gift' and a value under £40 then you should be ok. I've not asked for things to be marked as gift just low value and i've been fine for over a year. Just this month they've started to hold packages and send me a bill. So stuff marked at a value of £28 i'm getting a £16 bill for. Tehiving c**ts. (the fact that those packages are actually worth well over $500 is neither here nor there. :lol: )

Not true...your always buying stuff in bulk that tops out at $50. :lol: :lol:

 

[Joe]

Anyone know if we get fees/charges on parcels from Australia?

 

[itfciain]

Anyone know if we get fees/charges on parcels from Australia?

We should do - anything from outside the EU will have a customs form and a vaue marked on it. I haven't had lots of packages from Aus but those I have had, even one marked with a value of $200 was not charged

Same rules apply, if you can get them to mark it as a gift and low value then you will be safe

 

[jedisearcher]

Anyone know if we get fees/charges on parcels from Australia?

We should do - anything from outside the EU will have a customs form and a vaue marked on it. I haven't had lots of packages from Aus but those I have had, even one marked with a value of $200 was not charged

Same rules apply, if you can get them to mark it as a gift and low value then you will be safe

Any country inside the EU should be free in terms of customs but the HMRC website has a list somewhere if you're not sure. Some are abit odd, Norway you'd think is in the EU, but not in the tax part of the EU for some reason.

It's only happened to me once and I wandered into the mail office to pay with my debit card and was told you have to pay cash. wtf?! I scrapped together the money out of the car and paid the guy who wandered off with it, no receipt, nothing. I'd like to think it didn't go straight into his pocket but who knows ... :evil:

 

[tundra9]

Norway is NOT a member of the EU, never has, never will be, just to end the confusion right here.... :lol: