Customs Charge on item from US

kabman

I purchased 2 items from the US ebay website, both items are old watches.
The total value of both watches and p&p came to £9.60.

I received a royalmail card through the door saying I have to collect the parcel from the sorting office and there will be a £7.73 customs charge.

According to the customs website and info I have found on here, if the goods are under £18 then there should be no charge. I haven't checked with the post office yet because it says collect after 48 hours.

This charge must be wrong, anybody know what can I do.

Thanks

MarkyMarkD

Probably the seller mis-declared the Customs value, or they failed to declare the value and Customs estimated it, or they did declare the value and Customs believed they were worth more!

For the amount involved, I think I would just pay it honestly.

The £7.73 probably includes a post office handling charge, too, so you aren't getting charged a lot really.

Hintza

He will have added his postage onto his declaration. I bought a pram once and got hit with VAT on an extra $100...argh.


Go to post office pay the money and then contact your local customs and excise office. £4 will however be claerance fees. So all in all probably not worth the effort!!

kabman

The reason I am annoyed is, a friend of mine recently purchased an item from ebay USA and the total was £65. However he didn't get charged anything by the post office or customs.

This doesn't make any sense!

gardnt1

You'll have to check what value the sender put on the declaration. If declared as a gift you can import goods up to £36, commercial limit is £18.
If however values above this are stated including insurance etc, customs charge vat on everthing including the postage, handling!

I always ask US ebayers whether they will declare a certain value/gift before bidding, as customs can make things very expensive!

biblejohn

kabman wrote:

The reason I am annoyed is, a friend of mine recently purchased an item from ebay USA and the total was £65. However he didn't get charged anything by the post office or customs.

This doesn't make any sense!

Maybe pot luck then?

I ordered an item from the states last year. The item cost £100 in the UK and I could buy it from the states for £60. I figured id do that to save some costs. In the end after paying customs tax, vat, royal mail collection fee`s blah blah blah it cost me much more than the £100 I could have bought it from in the uk!

Lesson learnt!

buckers

I buy regularly from the states. Small packages such as jiffy bags generally tend to not attract customs attention, whereas big boxes do. I recently paid GBP230 for a piece of kit which was almost GBP600 here in the UK. Had to pay GBP69 import duty/P&P/VAT for it to be delivered, with the usual red label on it. Fine. Didn't mind at all. Then bought GBP120 worth of In Ear Monitoring kit from US, and the postie kindly left it at the door, with the red label on it saying I owed GBP27 for import duty/P&P/VAT. Hope he's not holding his breath for the money!
I think it's all down to how vigilant Customs are, and what sort of mood they're in that day!
Cheers...............Phil

kabman

I collected my package today from the post office and paid the customs charge of £7.73. However, when I checked the package the seller had put down a value of $40 for the item and had put the item as lipgloss, when in fact the item 2 watches,were worth $18 only. This is why I was charged.

I have phoned customs and told them I have a ebay invoice quoting the true value of my item and they said the will reimburse my fee.

This seller is going to get a negative feedback from me.

MarkyMarkD

Well done, kabman. I suspected the value had been mis-declared.

If the seller omits postage costs from the declared value, Customs can and do add it on, based on their estimate of the delivery costs if they haven't got a clue. This happened on my delivery from the US: I got charged VAT on less than the full cost including the (probably inflated in usual eBay style) delivery costs.