Australian company combining 2 separate orders which takes me over customs threshold, options?

chompie

I recently placed two orders with an Australian company, i was mindful to keep both orders below £135 so as not to have to pay £56+ to receive the items after a customs charge.
The orders were placed a couple of days apart.

Even though they have not shipped i have been told i cannot edit the order as they have gone to the warehouse for "picking and packing" and "will be combined."

Which takes the combined total over the customs threshold which is £180 total (under £135 without shipping costs but i believe they are included when calculating customs charges)

Do i have any recourse here?

At the moment i am thinking i either refuse to pay the customs and then if they are not sent back to the company to just contact my CC company and tell them i have not received the service/items i paid for...

Any thoughts?

MattMattMattUK

chompie said:

I recently placed two orders with an Australian company, i was mindful to keep both orders below £135 so as not to have to pay £56+ to receive the items after a customs charge.
The orders were placed a couple of days apart.

Even though they have not shipped i have been told i cannot edit the order as they have gone to the warehouse for "picking and packing" and "will be combined."

Which takes the combined total over the customs threshold which is £180 total (under £135 without shipping costs but i believe they are included when calculating customs charges)

Do i have any recourse here?

At the moment i am thinking i either refuse to pay the customs and then if they are not sent back to the company to just contact my CC company and tell them i have not received the service/items i paid for...

Any thoughts?

Not that I am aware of, but your consumer rights would be Australian not UK. As a purchaser you are responsible for import duties and taxes.

Refusing to pay the customs fees would be a bad idea and I imagine that rejecting the consignment will cause a whole bunch of issues. If you refuse the delivert and then take the chargeback route it will almost certainly fail.

I think you will just have to suck it up.

se2020

The tracking normally shows that the item was not delivered because "customs charges not paid"
The carrier company normally does this properly so they don't have to refund the shipper for the postage cost.

If you try to do a charge-back and the seller provides tracking information the charge-back will fail on that basis. 
This is also the same with things like ebay buyer protection. 

Card companies also keep a record of attempted charge-backs so too many is not a good idea.

400ixl

Unfortunately the only way to really protect yourself is to not order the second order until you have the notification it is on the final international leg. Waiting for the initial dispatch can sometimes not be enough (e.g. Aliexpress) where they even combine orders at the last outbound shipping location, so after the packages have left the warehouses. 

chompie

As far as i am concerned they are just trying to make extra cash.

I have paid quite the premium for 2 separate deliveries and they are simply saving cash bundling them up and customer be damned, if it costs them (me) a charge.

The annoying thing is that the items still haven't shipped after 3 days in the warehouse for "picking"
and even though i have contacted them several times they act like there's nothing they can do.

rollingmoon

Name and shame, and never order from them again.

martindow

Wouldn't the two individual orders have each been subject to import VAT etc.?  I would be aggrieved that the Australian company is the one saving on this, as no doubt one larger parcel is cheaper to send than two smaller ones.

Belenus

i have been told i cannot edit the order 

Can you cancel one order and reorder later?

MattMattMattUK

martindow said:

Wouldn't the two individual orders have each been subject to import VAT etc.?  I would be aggrieved that the Australian company is the one saving on this, as no doubt one larger parcel is cheaper to send than two smaller ones.

Yes, VAT applies regardless of the value of the shipment, the only thing that is waived if the value of the shipment is below £135 is any duties that would normally be applicable. Couriers also charge the recipient a handling fee for paying the VAT (and duty) on their behalf, depending on the courier that ranges from around £12 to £20 per shipment. 

The freight cost would depend on size and weight, if both still fell with the same weight bracket then possibly, but two smaller shipments can be cheaper than one larger one if it allows one to use a different service etc. I would suspect the saving on courier costs is probably minimal, it will be one less set of customs documents to fill in though.

martindow

MattMattMattUK said:

martindow said:

Wouldn't the two individual orders have each been subject to import VAT etc.?  I would be aggrieved that the Australian company is the one saving on this, as no doubt one larger parcel is cheaper to send than two smaller ones.

Yes, VAT applies regardless of the value of the shipment, the only thing that is waived if the value of the shipment is below £135 is any duties that would normally be applicable. Couriers also charge the recipient a handling fee for paying the VAT (and duty) on their behalf, depending on the courier that ranges from around £12 to £20 per shipment. 

The freight cost would depend on size and weight, if both still fell with the same weight bracket then possibly, but two smaller shipments can be cheaper than one larger one if it allows one to use a different service etc. I would suspect the saving on courier costs is probably minimal, it will be one less set of customs documents to fill in though.

So for the OP with two parcels at £90 each, the costs would be VAT of £18/ parcel and a clearance fee on each of, say, £15 making a total of £123 per parcel £246 in all.

As a single parcel of value £180, the VAT would be £36 and once clearance fee of £15 making a total of £231.

Commodity codes can be looked up here

https://www.gov.uk/trade-tariff

to find the duty rates.  Often these are very low of a few per cent only, so you may be better off with the single parcel.

I still think that the sender may have made a saving using a single box, so I would ask if you could have a partial refund for the delivery charge.  They can only say no ...