help, £88 import tax for £70 item bought from UK company on kickstarter

ishmish

hi all, my first post there, and in dire need of help.
I bought a Lix pen on kickstarter, (2 years ago) and only just recieved it (2 years late), the company is based in london, but as they posted it to my house direct from a china factory or so it seems. few days after recieving it, i have recieved an invoice from Fedex for import duty . the pen only cost £70 or so i paid, but as the company put its value as £333, the import duty came to a total of £79.25... thats more than i actually paid for the pen!. i did not expect import duty as it was a london based company. How do i get them to pay the import duty or do i contact HMRC to cancel it?

any advice would be very very much appreciated.

thanks
ish

maninthestreet

Two years waiting for the order to be shipped to you??

DCFC79

Is this 1 of them 3d printer pens ?

Keep_pedalling

Looks lots of people all over the world are being charged OTT import duty, because some idiot is massively over valuing the product on the paperwork.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lix3d/lix-the-smallest-3d-printing-pen-in-the-world/comments

forgotmyname

Blame the company that valued it at £333.

[Deleted User]

ishmish wrote: »

How do i get them to pay the import duty or do i contact HMRC to cancel it?

I doubt you'll have much luck with either, to be honest.

unholyangel

Contact HMRC & the retailer first and see what they say.

HMRC can definitely alter it if you have proof of what you paid but I think they'll only do it if you pay it first then send off the packaging it arrived in along with proof of actual price paid and you'd still be out some tax & the "handling fee" portion of the charge as £70 would be well over the limit. But at least you'd have your item without too much faffing about and too much additional cost.

The alternative is to try the kickstarter company. How successful this will be given you technically didn't buy anything, just donated to a project (at least according to kickstarters terms from what I remember, not sure if theres been any similar cases which might indicate whether it is definitely a contract of sale or not), I have no idea.

paddyrg

This is just another hazard of kickstarter vaporware - it's a result that it ever arrived at all! So many people who've never been industrial designers or engineers and never seen a project through full lifecycle and never managed a project with a budget over £100 before get to advertise on an equal platform with people who do know what they're doing. The ones who know what they're doing necessarily promise less and charge more simply because they don't want to lie, where the amateurs have a dream then end up getting stuck having to fulfill it.

I see so many campaigns for people determined to make an action movie with a half-baked script and $50k And it simply cannot be done, but kickstarter get their percentage so they keep on promising the moon.

Really sorry to hear your grief, i hope the device is worth it!

ishmish

yes was a 3d printing pen. TBH i wish it never arrived, Asked for a refund for 1 year and they refused, so to get charged an extra £88 is shocking. Will contact company and just send them the bill telling them to pay it and contact HMRC and hope for the best. find it shocking that anyone can just post a parcel to you then charge retrospective import duty.
Thanks for your help, will let you all know if i get any result, hopefully will help anyone else who has had same issue.

if all fails, learned a valuable lesson of never buy anything on kickstarter

DCFC79

ishmish wrote: »

yes was a 3d printing pen. TBH i wish it never arrived, Asked for a refund for 1 year and they refused, so to get charged an extra £88 is shocking. Will contact company and just send them the bill telling them to pay it and contact HMRC and hope for the best. find it shocking that anyone can just post a parcel to you then charge retrospective import duty.
Thanks for your help, will let you all know if i get any result, hopefully will help anyone else who has had same issue.

if all fails, learned a valuable lesson of never buy anything on kickstarter

Nothing wrong with Kickstarte but more the company who sent the item.

[Deleted User]

ishmish wrote: »

Will contact company and just send them the bill telling them to pay it and contact HMRC

The tax bill is yours to pay. I wouldn't be "hoping for the best" if I were you. You need to follow Unholyangel's advice from earlier in the thread.