Courier asks me to pay for VAT not mentioned on website

TallArnie

I ordered a dress from a .co.uk website, but it turns out the seller is based in Hong Kong / China, and the courier is now asking me to pay VAT / import tax. At no point during the ordering process was I made aware of this. The FAQs of the website says "In some cases, your destination country may charge customs duties or other taxes. We have no control over these charges as customs policies vary widely from country to country. Please check with your local customs office for further information."
Is this legal? Do I have to pay this unexpected fee to the courier?

*** EDIT on 10th of June (i.e. 2 weeks after the initial discussion below): The retailer have refunded the additional fee without much fuss, so I don't want this discussion to be a black mark on their reputation !! ***

bod1467

Is it legal? Yes
Do you have to pay it? Morally yes*
Can you reclaim this from the seller? Depends on what the T&Cs say - per your post it looks like they may have this covered. Is this mentioned in info that you've ticked a box to say you read? (Whether you actually read it or not is immaterial).

I'd guess that you could try and reclaim the cost, but the chances of success are minimal and not worth the effort.

Note: If the goods had been processed by Royal Mail you would have had to pay these charges before the goods were released to you. Other couriers tend to deliver the goods then recover the charges later.

* If you refuse to pay the charges then the courier may take you to court to recover them. Of course they also may not - that's the risk you would take if you refused.

InsideInsurance

yes, if you want your goods.

It is always the buyers responsibility to pay taxes for importing goods. As to what is legal? Guess you'd need to research Hong Kong website advertising rules given thats where they are based but I strongly suspect you'd be wasting your time.

Always check where goods are coming from and factor in the additional taxes you'll have to pay if its outside of the EU

maninthestreet

What was the website? It may help other people from making the same mistake....

TallArnie

Thanks all for the quick replies. The website is http://www.jjshouse.co.uk/ and the courier is DHL.

maninthestreet

TallArnie wrote: »

Thanks all for the quick replies. The website is http://www.jjshouse.co.uk/ and the courier is DHL.

They don't hide their location(s) :

http://www.jjshouse.co.uk/office_location

Tuppence2015

Unless stated on the invoice cost is £0.00 then always expect the delivery company to charge you the VAT on the shipment. Ive had several items and always had to pay the VAT.

maninthestreet wrote: »

They don't hide their location(s) :

TallArnie

maninthestreet wrote: »

They don't hide their location(s) :

http://www.jjshouse.co.uk/office_location

Totally true. But usually I do not check where a retailer is based, particularly when the website is a .co.uk address, and payment is in ££s. I know I shouldn't have assumed as such, and I'll definitely pay more attention to this in the future.

wealdroam

From their website:

3. Are there any additional fees involved in shipping?

In some cases, your destination country may charge customs duties or other taxes. We have no control over these charges as customs policies vary widely from country to country. Please check with your local customs office for further information.

TallArnie

wealdroam wrote: »

From their website:

That's exactly what I wrote in my original post...
Rightly or wrongly, I was under the assumption that - following the whole 'whoo-ha' in the airline industry - a retailer must include all add-ons and taxes in their pricing and do so as early as possible in the purchasing process. I have been buying from outside the EU before, and never had any request for import tax before, so following the first two replies in this thread, I am now merely retracing my steps here where I've made the wrong assumption rather than black-marking the retailer.

InsideInsurance

The whole thing on the airlines was on a UK based website, non-uk based sites can still do whatever their local law allows.

Import tax is near impossible to deal with by the vendor as they'd need to know every tax law of every country in the world and any special terms imposed from special agreements.

Bought an item via my company from Germany because it worked out more effective for our tax arrangements but the company there knew what they had to do but no idea how impacted us as they gave the normal generic message over whos liable for tax and their UK sister company tried to argue it was better for us to buy here because of having to pay import tax which was wrong on every level and suggests they may not be processing overseas orders correctly.

If thats how bad we are with neighbouring countries I am not sure how well HK would know Tuvalu's tax laws