Royal Mail question with regards to hangling customs

misterthankful

Keith wrote: »

10,000 items arrive in the UK
3 items are addressed to you

Do you expect Royal Mail to process all the items into little piles, find that 3 are for you and send you one processing fee?

Obviously not and this ridiculous assertion shows that you don't understand. I have no qualms with paying multiple fees in such situations but when all three are literally together I shouldn't have to pay £24 in handling when they only do paperwork on one.

misterthankful

Ivory_Tinkler wrote: »

How do you know 100% that they were processed at the same time and done together?

For one thing the seller put them together, the second is that the reference numbers from Royal Mail are consecutive as in those three processed were consecutively done without any other person between them.

This isn't the first time I've paid customs. I've done it more times than I'd like to think and have many times had to pay a series of customs charges. No, this is the first time where I feel I have been wronged as the point of the £8 handling fee (as said by the Royal Mail person I spoke to) is based on the time of processing the order through customs with paperwork, however considering in this case one piece of paperwork was done for my three items (which were processed consecutively - if there were others in between my packages then that would be a different case but in this situation it was me >> me >> me) then I should only pay one fee.

custardy

they cant have been together
if they were together they would have been one item,one postage price paid
they come in large trolleys so even if they are in the same trolley they will have been handled many times before hitting the UK office

Ivory_Tinkler

OP I think it is your seller that is at fault here and that has caused the problem. If the items have been sent separately then the seller would have paid for 3 lots of postage hence you have 3 lots of clearance to pay. Your seller should have packed the items together as one and then there wouldn't have been a problem. Regardless of how they were processed and what order the reference numbers fall in, there were 3 parcels to handle. I think you should be grumbling to your seller and not to Royal Mail for essentially doing their job even though you don't agree with the way they have done it.

Just out of interest, why did your seller send the items separately...was it perhaps to avoid any import tax/duties?

Torby

Either they were sent in 1 box in which case thats 1 parcel, or 3 seperate boxes (jiffy bags or whatever) = 3 parcels.

That means either 1 charge or 3 charges

If the 3 packages all have US postage paid on them...thats 3 UK charges.

FWIW: I think the American seller has sent them in 3 seperate packages due to the price of each item, I believe if they were all in one the cost may have been in excess of £18 (the customs limit from memory), which means you get charged 1 handling fee plus appropriate taxes....so he has split them into packages less than £18...to avoid the taxes....but you now get caught with the handling fees for 3.

Someone has not done their sums....3 handling charges with no taxes or 1 handling charge plus taxes...obviously you choose the cheapest option...but you don't always win.