Royal Mail £8 Internal Post Handling Fee scam?

finance-boy

I think what's most annoying about this situation is: if they stopped charging ridiculous "handling fees", Royal Mail wouldn't need a dedicated team of people (i.e. custardy, superscaper (possibly), and all their collegues over Britain) to deal with all the complaints they so rightly generate. And if the fees were scrapped altogether, then the alleged costs involved wouldn't even exist.

So you can see that the only people who benefit from this policy are Royal Mail and those in the employ of Royal Mail (particularly those in the handling fee department, eh?)

custardy

so who would pay for the handling that RM are required to do for customs anyway?
fyi handling fee dept doesnt exist,that would be the offices recieving international items and having to process those for customs checking the declarations on those packets
as ive said,how about all the packets are just left at HMRC,you can pay their VAT,taxes,fee's and the costs for getting the packet to you from London?

superscaper

finance-boy wrote: »

wouldn't need a dedicated team of people (i.e. custardy, superscaper (possibly), and all their collegues over Britain) to deal with all the complaints they so rightly generate.

I thought I gave enough hints in my posts, e.g. "assuming vested interest" etc which would be a bit hypocritical if I did have a vested interest. I've got nothing to do with RM or any postal or courier firm. :rolleyes:
In fact I've been quite plain on this forum about what I do and have done for a living. The last post I made about RM besides this thread was actually about RM employees local to me stealing post. I'd hardly call that defending them. :rolleyes:

custardy

superscaper wrote: »

I thought I gave enough hints in my posts, e.g. "assuming vested interest" etc which would be a bit hypocritical if I did have a vested interest. I've got nothing to do with RM or any postal or courier firm. :rolleyes:
In fact I've been quite plain on this forum about what I do and have done for a living. The last post I made about RM besides this thread was actually about RM employees local to me stealing post. I'd hardly call that defending them. :rolleyes:

subdifuge!!!

finance-boy

Royal Mail would pay for the handling, since that's their job anyway. Or HMRC could pay, if they want the packages so badly.

But please don't try to shift all the blame to HMRC. I know they're partly to blame, and I'm not happy with the way they apply customs duty (seemingly at random, yet seemingly always on my parcels). But they're not the ones trying to fob me off with two unjustifiable £8 handling fees.

By the way, I say "unjustifiable", because most of the costs that the Royal Mail claims it has to pay (unnecessary tracking fees, etc) are actually being paid to the Royal Mail itself. So how on earth can they justify this £8 figure?

If you want me to shut up about this, I'm afraid you'll have to give me an itemised breakdown of all the costs involved.:D

custardy

speak to RM given you would need to know the wages and time involved given each item is individually tracked from customs
the fee's are for the costs involved in paying your fee's!
you talk all you like but my point stands,the same system is in place for all chargable items in the UK regardless of carrier

Freddie_Snowbits

finance-boy wrote: »

Royal Mail would pay for the handling, since that's their job anyway.

Why should RM Pay. You ordered the goods from outside the EU. You got charged VAT and ab Admin Fee.

I order goods from the USA (Photographic, I pay UPS £10 and the VAT upfront, I ensure the box is correctly labelled and hey presto I normally have the goods in my mitts within 2 working days. Sometimes I even get a refund on the VAT as well. See customs below

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/HelpCenter/int-shippingRulesPolicies.jsp

For your benefit, perhaps a read of this site may be enlightening to you
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageImport_ShowContent&propertyType=document&id=HMCE_PROD1_028938

And if you do not want to pay, as it says clearly on the site I use, You will get no refund if goods are confisacted or returned because of Custom Issues.

Now put thatin your pipe and smoke it.

finance-boy

But I don't even smoke a pipe. Why don't you put that in your pipe and smoke it?

Also, good for you, you managed to find a place that lets you pay VAT upfront. I'm genuinely very happy for you. Unfortunately, very, very few places actually let you do this. As for badly-labelled boxes; well I'm sorry that the seller may have botched the customs declaration - I really shouldn't have asked them to do that.

Yes, I imported something from outside the EU. So shoot me. My fish is an extremely fussy eater, and I couldn't find a UK/EU supplier to source his food from. He would have (eventually) died if I didn't order that food for him. It's not like I just go around importing things willy nilly.

And - as I said before - I don't mind paying the VAT at all, just the admin fee, which, like most admin fees, is completely spurious. Unlike most admin fees, however, we have no choice over whether to pay this one - if we want our packages that we have paid for; packages that we may be relying on; packages that are rightfully ours; we have to pay a ransom to Royal Mail for them. This isn't like a balance transfer fee - you can't just choose not to take advantage of Royal Mail's oh-so-generous offer.

custardy wrote:

well perhaps because i deal with customs charges
i have to track them
process them
administrate the charges
deal with the money and accounting generated by this
deal with returns
deal with tracking these items back to HMRC

"Deal"? "Process"? "Administrate"? Aren't these just words people use to sound busy? And nobody asked Royal Mail to pay itself for tracking the parcels - there's nothing to stop them just chucking all the parcels in a big van and driving them down to HMRC and back again before delivering them as planned (total additional cost = about 20p per parcel)

But never mind, I see where I went wrong now - I accidentally posted this on "The We Love Royal Mail Board", and not "The (Consumer) Vent Board", as I originally thought.:rolleyes:

Well, anyway, I'm going to go and choke on my own bile now. But it's been nice speaking to you all.

custardy

finance-boy wrote: »

But I don't even smoke a pipe. Why don't you put that in your pipe and smoke it?

Also, good for you, you managed to find a place that lets you pay VAT upfront. I'm genuinely very happy for you. Unfortunately, very, very few places actually let you do this. As for badly-labelled boxes; well I'm sorry that the seller may have botched the customs declaration - I really shouldn't have asked them to do that.

Yes, I imported something from outside the EU. So shoot me. My fish is an extremely fussy eater, and I couldn't find a UK/EU supplier to source his food from. He would have (eventually) died if I didn't order that food for him. It's not like I just go around importing things willy nilly.

And - as I said before - I don't mind paying the VAT at all, just the admin fee, which, like most admin fees, is completely spurious. Unlike most admin fees, however, we have no choice over whether to pay this one - if we want our packages that we have paid for; packages that we may be relying on; packages that are rightfully ours; we have to pay a ransom to Royal Mail for them. This isn't like a balance transfer fee - you can't just choose not to take advantage of Royal Mail's oh-so-generous offer.




"Deal"? "Process"? "Administrate"? Aren't these just words people use to sound busy? And nobody asked Royal Mail to pay itself for tracking the parcels - there's nothing to stop them just chucking all the parcels in a big van and driving them down to HMRC and back again before delivering them as planned (total additional cost = about 20p per parcel)

But never mind, I see where I went wrong now - I accidentally posted this on "The We Love Royal Mail Board", and not "The (Consumer) Vent Board", as I originally thought.:rolleyes:

Well, anyway, I'm going to go and choke on my own bile now. But it's been nice speaking to you all.

well actually they did,again you can ask the regulator about them requiring RM to do that to give them a break down in costs so this requires tracking.
so 'someone' did
what packets are RM 'throwing in a truck'?
which ones require duty to be paid
which ones have incorrect/false declarations?
which ones require to be opened for HMRC to check?
so RM take all these items along (for free) then wait at HMRC(for free) then take them back(for free) then deliver them?
im sure you believe yours is the only two packets that arrived that day
how do you work out 20p costs to load/transport/unload/move/reload/trasport/unload each of thetruck load of packets?
bearing in mind these are not UK packets so RM wasnt paid directly to transport these packets?

no its consumer vent but not the i should get paid in life but everyone else should work for free

Freddie_Snowbits

finance-boy wrote: »

But never mind, I see where I went wrong now - I accidentally posted this on "The We Love Royal Mail Board", and not "The (Consumer) Vent Board", as I originally thought.

You called the process a Scam. A Scam is a scheme for making money by dishonest means. I am sure that the Post Office and HMRC do list their charges openy and the Import restrictions are also listed on the HMRC site. To me they are not dishonest.

So therefore imo this is not a scam. If you do not like the charges then fly there yourself and import it in person.

More power to the likes of Custardy, who is opem with his advice on this matter over the time. As I expalined in my post, I seem not to have a problem when importing goods.