Royal mail customs charge is morally wrong let's fight it

Hintza

Captain_Leaky wrote: »

All the original poster had to do was to request that the seller state a lower-than-threshold value on the shipping carton label.

AFAIK, if the item is labelled as being worth less than £15, then no RM 'Handling fee' is applicable.

You don't look to clever when your £1,500 item has been labelled as having a value of £15 and gets lost/damaged and you want to put in an insurance claim, which is rejected.

marliepanda

They definitely open suss looking packages. I buy from a U.S. Cosmetics company that insists on putting $1 on its packages. Even when my order is under £15 I get charged cos they mark it so stupidly. I've contacted them a few times and they didn't seem bothered so I stopped buying from them.

meer53

visidigi wrote: »

Not really, they are on amazon for £34 delivered.

So the OP is still quids in on UK prices.

They could be fake too.

akkers

In this day and age of internet, on-line shopping and emails why do they need people to fill in forms etc. They could easily automate this process where you get an email to pay the duty on-line. Once you pay it, it triggers the delivery to go ahead.
IMO the £8 charge is a rip-off, a big one at that!

Nilrem

akkers wrote: »

In this day and age of internet, on-line shopping and emails why do they need people to fill in forms etc. They could easily automate this process where you get an email to pay the duty on-line. Once you pay it, it triggers the delivery to go ahead.
IMO the £8 charge is a rip-off, a big one at that!

Well that's one of the things you pay the extra for courier services.
Couriers require far more information before they receive a package, including the size, weight, value and type of goods before they collect a package usually.

RM on the other hand receive packages from all sorts of different postal services and local couriers with no information received ahead of time, then have to manually check and enter the information from the customs invoice into a computer (at which point the computer will print the letters if needed).

It's the locating, checking and entering the customs information, then collecting it you're paying for.

whatmichaelsays

sanibel686 wrote: »

How can it be morally or ethically correct for a government to allow a company to charge it's citizens more in collection fees than the actual duty raised?

I fail to see the relevance of the duty payable vs the fee charged.

The administration and costs involved in handling customs fee are likely to be fixed costs. The costs incurred by Royal Mail will be the same whether the duty is £1 or £1,000.

LilElvis

akkers wrote: »

In this day and age of internet, on-line shopping and emails why do they need people to fill in forms etc. They could easily automate this process where you get an email to pay the duty on-line. Once you pay it, it triggers the delivery to go ahead.
IMO the £8 charge is a rip-off, a big one at that!

And where would they get the recipients e-mail address from? Even if they had it someone would then have to input it into the system you propose. That would cost money so they would still charge.

Krissy306

Hi there in on this thread as I've received a letter wanting £35.57 why is mine more than what everyone else pays, any idea? It was ordered from America no value. Thanks in advance

powerful_Rogue

krissycontagious wrote: »

Hi there in on this thread as I've received a letter wanting £35.57 why is mine more than what everyone else pays, any idea? It was ordered from America no value. Thanks in advance

Must have a value - Unless you was sent air.

Just because someone marked an item as having no value, that dosent fool customs.

marliepanda

krissycontagious wrote: »

Hi there in on this thread as I've received a letter wanting £35.57 why is mine more than what everyone else pays, any idea? It was ordered from America no value. Thanks in advance

Without an idea of your postage cost from America then customs have given your parcel a value of around £125 including any postage cost.

What is it? How much did it cost for it to be sent to you?