Returned Item due to Incorrect Declared Value

MR1988

I've ordered something from outside the UK and the total of what I ordered is £119.98

I just received a text message and emails to pay Import Charges. Is this correct? I thought goods up to £135 are not due to taxes and import charges. Where am I wrong?

born_again

Where out of the UK & what was ordered, as not all are equal.

DullGreyGuy

MR1988 said:

I've ordered something from outside the UK and the total of what I ordered is £119.98

I just received a text message and emails to pay Import Charges. Is this correct? I thought goods up to £135 are not due to taxes and import charges. Where am I wrong?

Goods with a landed cost under £135 dont attract Duty but do have VAT. In principle the merchant or the market place should be collecting this at the point of sale. Ultimately it all comes down to what they've written on the declaration form. 

Where did you buy it from? eBay? Amazon? Direct from a seller?

Are you sure it's actually the real courier about these goods? I get periodic texts for underpaid post or import charges but they're phishing attempts as the links aren't to the official Royal Mail/FedEx etc websites.

How much are they asking for?

MR1988

It's an online retailer from France. The actual figures are as follows:

Subtotal (incl. VAT) :
£ 119,98

Discount :
- £ 24,00

Shipping fee :
£ 0,00

Total (incl. VAT) :
£ 95,98

VAT included in the total :
£ 11,33

_____

I's definitely not a phishing attempt as I received the email of items being shipped and a day later I got text from DPD to pay the customs. The link takes me to DPD website to pay.

MR1988

Follow-up: I have called DPD and apparently the invoice supplied to them is for £199.96, which is incorrect. So I guess the items will be returned as I am not going to pay the costs because of a sender error.

superbigal

All good if you can get your money back from the merchant.

MR1988

Update: Right, so this has dragged on for quite a while now and I got nowhere. Now I am without items and without money. The items have been returned to sender and sender stopped responding to my queries. I have opened a dispute with PayPal to which I have uploaded all evidence with tracking of item being returned to sender, invoices and everything else relevant. PayPal came back to me today refusing my claim saying that seller uploaded tracking information (Tracking information that I do not have access to).

What can I do in this situation? Would a call to PayPal solve anything since the disput has been closed? Do they ever go back on results? Should I try a credit card chargeback and is it worth it? What would the implications be, would I lose my PayPal account?

Any assistance would be appreciated.

se2020

Unfortunately psypal protection does not cover you if the seller has uploaded tracking that shows the goods were returned due to the duty not being paid. 

This might not be the case if you instructed dpd to return the item but if you just didn't pay the charges and they returned them automatically it will be.

A credit card charge back will fail on the same basis and you may risk getting your paypal account suspended for that although it's unlikely if it's the first one you have ever done.

The best thing to have done was pay the duty then submit the invoice to dpd afterwards claiming for an incorrect calculation.  They are not very good at paying out so you might never have got it back but you would at least have the goods.

As you are now, I'd contact the seller, offer to pay the postage to have it resent and ask them to fill in the form correctly.  Although they have given you 'free' postage they probably put the actual postage cost separately on the form when they should have broken down into item and postage cost.