Royal Mail's £8 customs handling charge - any way to avoid? Is it legal?

OlliesDad

magiccake wrote: »

Surely you must see that an £8 fee for a £4 customs charge is pretty unjustifiable. That is a massive barrier to international trade.

I cannot see any reason why it would cost RM more to clear £4 than to clear a larger amount. The admin work involved would be identical and therefore a flat fee seems wholly reasonable.

As mentioned earlier, you can clear the item yourself but the sender has to mark the documentation appropriately.

visidigi

paddyrg wrote: »

There are other shipping companies - next time ask for FedEx or whoever, and ask for the duty to be prepaid (some shipping companies will do this, they preestimate it and collect on posing rather than delivery). Of course this costs more than the $25 paid for postage, but as long as it's not a 'rip-off', right? ;-)

It's perfectly possible to do your own clearance, but £8 is a total bargain. Look at your hourly pay from work - that's maybe 1 hour of overtime? It'll take longer than an hour to do the paperwork, plus on top of that, bonded storage and still requiring RM to pluck your package from the mail stream, and then potentially onward delivery (as you don't want them to do their bit).

Bonded storage, a friend imported a teensy small rug once, the clearance agents (not RM) charged £8 for the first week, then £8/day until he could collect and complete clearance. He spent £100 all told in warehouse and fees. And this was back in the 1990's, it hadn't got any cheaper!

FYI FedEx charges a clearance fee, flat rate or % depending on amount.

Prepaying a retailer also includes the clearance fee the retailer will have to pay (as ultimately all the courier does is bill shipper instead of recipient).

visidigi

OlliesDad wrote: »

I cannot see any reason why it would cost RM more to clear £4 than to clear a larger amount. The admin work involved would be identical and therefore a flat fee seems wholly reasonable.

As mentioned earlier, you can clear the item yourself but the sender has to mark the documentation appropriately.

Its all about the risk.

The clearance work is the same, but the % of successful collection of those paid duties is lower.

The system has to pay for its existence.

timbstoke

magiccake wrote: »

Not really a solution, is it? And it's any country outside of the EU.

Why isn't it? Between big businesses selling our jobs to the country with the cheapest labour, and people importing goods from abroad rather than buying British, it's no wonder nobody has any money these day.

Money-Saving-King

magiccake wrote: »

Surely you must see that an £8 fee for a £4 customs charge is pretty unjustifiable. That is a massive barrier to international trade.

The work involved is going to be same no matter what the original price. Why should someone who's paid a lot of money for something like some jewellery maybe have subsidise someone like you who haven't spent much money at all?

As for the International trade thing well it's managed for decades so can't be much of a barrier!

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

magiccake wrote: »

Is there any way to prevent Royal Mail from dealing with HMRC on my behalf and do it myself?

Yes, drive to where the package is imported and take it through customs yourself. Simple!

adouglasmhor

visidigi wrote: »

They pay the HMRC (not border agency) to have staff present at the RM sorting hubs. These staff decide which shipments to inspect.

They should get their money back in that case as HMRC are sending them staff who are so useless they do not know that Sweden is in the EU and that a tax paid label means the tax is already paid on an item.

visidigi

adouglasmhor wrote: »

They should get their money back in that case as HMRC are sending them staff who are so useless they do not know that Sweden is in the EU and that a tax paid label means the tax is already paid on an item.

Depends on what's in the package.

e.g. Tobacco and Alcohol are always levied for tax and duties whether its been paid originally or not.

adouglasmhor

visidigi wrote: »

Depends on what's in the package.

e.g. Tobacco and Alcohol are always levied for tax and duties whether its been paid originally or not.

It was Eau de Parfum in my case (0 rated for duty and vat as standard - vat was paid at source as bought in EU) and I had to claim from the vender then they claimed off HMRC it took months.

[Deleted User]

It depends on how the shipper labels the package. For example I buy regularly from a supplement company in the USA. When using the International mail option, they don't mention the shipping cost in the outer label, probably playing around or fiddling with the rules. It might not be entirely legal, but this is why I order from them.

I check on the HMRC website the latest official exchange rates for custom purposes:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/398034/exrates-012015c.csv/preview

and I make sure that the order doesn't exceed £15.

You would have to ask the vendor in advance what they declare on the label.