Customs charges for books from the US ?

blackberryfield

Not trying to be funny or argue with them about procedure. Just questioning why a Royal Mail company would do things differently this time. Charging customs after delivery. Odd.

As for the books, they are these books published by hakepublishing dot com. I don't know what HMRC classifies as "children's books" but these ones are labelled in terms of American school grades, hence the numbers 4 to 8 on each book title. I bought book series for grade 4 and grade 5 (I.e. book series 4 and 5) which is for 9 and 10 year olds. I am going to query Parcelforce for sure. Won't hand them a penny until they can justify why they think these aren't children's books.

System

Yes but the customs declaration needs to state this. Customs etc don't open and inspect all parcels, for the most part they go by the declaration. This sounds like a failure of the seller to declare them correctly

blackberryfield

If it is the failure of the seller to declare them properly, is there anything I can do to absolve myself of paying the customs fee? What about an invoice detailing the items I ordered? I wonder if Parcelforce or HMRC would really bother with this but if I do that and send them links to the book publisher's website so they can see the books really are children's educational books as such, would it work? I can also send photos of the books I received. Oh well worth a try anyway.

JAG

I think you will need to contact the Border Agency to see if you can get the import duty back, because Parcel Force will have already paid the duty to HMRC, so they are owed money from you.

In the past I imported a low value item and on the declaration the sender put $.95 to represent 95 cents, but the label was misread as $95 so I was charged an import duty fee and handling fee.

I had to send off paper work (invoice etc) to the border agency to point out the error. So in the end I didn't need to pay the fees.

I believe I got all the details on how to do this from the HMRC website.

blackberryfield

I called HMRC today and they say it sounds like the books I ordered are duty free and zero rated, and that Parcelforce cocked up... man on the phone was even surprised Parcelforce delivered it before asking me to pay the duty. They said I could claim the customs fee back by sending in a form and supporting documents to them (the HMRC) but I'd have to pay Parcelforce first. Called Parcelforce afterwards and they told me it happened like this because sometimes they update their systems after delivering the parcels. I said alright can I pay now, and they said okay... but then told me after a few mins their systems aren't working and will call me back when the systems are up again. Been waiting all day and they haven't called yet. Maybe I'll try them again tomorrow.