Bought from UK, but charged import duty!

dash_rendar

Hi all.

This is my first post here, so please be gentle!!

Anyway, I bought a replacement power supply for my laptop from a .co.uk website. The website charged in "£" and only offered 'standard shipping' at £8.00.

Anyway, after a week the PSU had not arrived so I emailed the company and asked where it was. They provided me with a UPS tracking number. I followed the number, and was surprised to find the PSU had been shipped from the US.

Another week goes by, and this morning I get a customs slip through the door, saying I'll have to pay an additional £10.76! I've paid this now, but I am a bit narked, since I could have bought the item from a UK trader on Ebay for just a couple of quid more than my original outlay.

I don't mind paying import duty on items I have explicitly asked to be imported. But it seems a bit cheeky to have been mislead by the website in question. (I've double-checked, and there is no indication anywhere that the item would be imported.)

Does anyone know where I stand on this?

Thanks.

ABH_3

dash_rendar wrote: »

Hi all.

This is my first post here, so please be gentle!!

Anyway, I bought a replacement power supply for my laptop from a .co.uk website. The website charged in "£" and only offered 'standard shipping' at £8.00.

Anyway, after a week the PSU had not arrived so I emailed the company and asked where it was. They provided me with a UPS tracking number. I followed the number, and was surprised to find the PSU had been shipped from the US.

Another week goes by, and this morning I get a customs slip through the door, saying I'll have to pay an additional £10.76! I've paid this now, but I am a bit narked, since I could have bought the item from a UK trader on Ebay for just a couple of quid more than my original outlay.

I don't mind paying import duty on items I have explicitly asked to be imported. But it seems a bit cheeky to have been mislead by the website in question. (I've double-checked, and there is no indication anywhere that the item would be imported.)

Does anyone know where I stand on this?

Thanks.

Email the seller, point out that you were charged 'duty' and suggest he offer him the opportunity to pay it. If he refuses leave him appropriate feedback! When he complaints to ebay\paypal about it being 'unfair' etc and how he should have been provided the opportunity to take care fo the situation you can copy out his reply. Be careful how you word your 'offer' as if it comes accross as 'either you reimburse me or I leave you negative feedback', ebay will more that likely remove it using some odd rule. As the feedback system has to be 'honest' and putting him in such a situation will likely count against you, you need to get him to tell you to get lost or something. Then you can leave feedback accordingly. Alternatively, can't you complain to paypal or whoever?

HTH

dash_rendar

Thanks for the suggestion.

Unfortunately, this wasn't an Ebay purchase. If it was, I would be in a stronger position, as Ebay expressly forbid any misrepresentation of location, so I would certainly be able to recover my funds if it had been a PayPal payment.

But this was a just a regular Internet purchase.

Actually, paying an extra tenner doesn't bother me too much. It's more the principle. I was considering what would have happened if I had, for example, purchased a £1000 guitar from a UK website. If the guitar had arrived with an extra £300 import tax bill, then I would have been extremely unhappy!

deanos

Just because it ends in co.uk does not mean its based in the UK, easy mistake to make.

Do you have a link to the website you used ?

dash_rendar

Yeah, I know it doesn't mean it has to be based in the UK. But pricing in GBP and making no reference to obtaining products from the US seems misleading.

I've tried to post the link to the actual product, but on doing so, this forum responds with:

Sorry as a new user you are not allowed to post with links. This is done to stop spammers clogging up the site. Please edit your message below to continue.

The site is superezstore.co.uk.

I've also done a nominet lookup, which says:

Domain name:
superezstore.co.uk

Registrant type:
UK Individual

Registrant's address:
The registrant is a non-trading individual who has opted to have their address omitted from the WHOIS service.

(I've excluded their name in the quote.)

Does seem a bit dubious trading under a 'non-trading' domain name.

deanos

If you look at the T+C's it seems like its in USA , and googling the company name also suggests its based in the USA from the similar complaints to yours

23911 Garnier Street Suite A Torrance CA 90505

http://www.superezstore.co.uk/terms-and-conditions.html

dash_rendar

Does a tenuous reference to a US address for sending "notices" in the T&Cs count as sufficient information to the buyer that the items they're purchasing in GBP from a .co.uk site will actually be shipped from overseas and incur duty? (If the site defaulted to dollars, then that would be a reasonable indicator.)

Their contact form also defaults to "United Kingdom".

When you're purchasing an item on the Internet, should the buyer do a WHOIS lookup and then trawl through every line to see if there's a hint somewhere that products might not be sourced in the UK?

When you're selecting your postage option, would you not normally expect a site to indicate that your item is being sent overseas?

If you buy a product from, say, amazon.co.uk, do you suspect that the products might be shipped from the US and incur extra charges you haven't been told about? If not, then why don't the same rules apply to a site you're not so familiar with?

Just a quick query referring to my last post... Under the WHOIS regulations, is it not illegal to commercially trade from a domain name registered to a 'private' individual whose details have been 'opted-out' and are therefore not publically available?

dash_rendar

P.S. The power supply in question turned up with a US plug. Isn't that just the icing-on-the-cake!?

£$&*"($£&(

dash_rendar wrote: »

Does a tenuous reference to a US address for sending "notices" in the T&Cs count as sufficient information to the buyer that the items they're purchasing in GBP from a .co.uk site will actually be shipped from overseas and incur duty? (If the site defaulted to dollars, then that would be a reasonable indicator.)

When you're purchasing an item on the Internet, should the buyer do a WHOIS lookup and then trawl through every line to see if there's a hint somewhere that products might not be sourced in the UK?

While I agree that the site is not being frank there are plenty of indications that it's a non UK site (from the name, the pricing, layout and various terminology). However the key thing is you've decided to deal with a company you have never heard of which fails to provide any contact details on it's website. If your going to deal with such sites you do need to do a lot of research and not jump in because of a cheap price. This could have just as easily been a scam website.

pinkshoes

grahawk wrote: »

While I agree that the site is not being frank there are plenty of indications that it's a non UK site (from the name, the pricing, layout and various terminology).

I completely disagree. It looks like a UK site, the prices are in £, and a general look through all the "contact us" and other tabs don't suggest it's anything other than a UK site!!

grahawk wrote: »

However the key thing is you've decided to deal with a company you have never heard of which fails to provide any contact details on it's website. If your going to deal with such sites you do need to do a lot of research and not jump in because of a cheap price. This could have just as easily been a scam website.

Hindsight is a marvellous thing isn't it???

Dash-rendar, you should try contacting the company, and insisting on a full refund including import duty, and return postage. If they don't play ball, inform them you'll be speaking to trading standards. If you don't get every penny back, make sure you write them as many bad reviews as possible!

dash_rendar

grahawk wrote: »

While I agree that the site is not being frank there are plenty of indications that it's a non UK site (from the name, the pricing, layout and various terminology).

I also have to disagree with this statement. The name of the company is "SuperEZStore.co.uk". It's not just the domain name. So, this name is indicative of a UK company. The pricing is in GBP, so how does that suggest it's not a UK site? The layout? Well, !!!!-poor web design is not exclusive to the US!

But you are correct in that I did not thoroughly research the site before I made my purchase. For a <£30 purchase, sometimes it's just not worth the effort. So long as we're paying by credit card and so long as the HTTPS certificate is valid, then I figure I'm basically covered.

Pinkshoes, thanks for that suggestion. I've already contacted them and they've offered to pay half the duty. I'm happy to accept that as it just doesn't seem worth the effort pursuing this any further.

Thanks to all for your advice.