Parcelforce again

tenbears10

I did a search and found that parcelfarce is well known here for its non existant service but I have another concern.

I collected a parcel yesterday which had incurred a vat charge as it came from the USA. I understand these charges are a necessary evil of importing into the UK these days but what I can not accept are the clearance fees imposed by parcelforce themselves.

I was charged £18.71 but this was calculated as follows:

Vat £10.71
import duty £0.00
Parcelforce clearance fee £8

So parcelforce are charging an almost 80% handling fee :eek: How is this legal. If a credit card company or cash machine tried to impose this percentage charge there would be uproar and yet parcelfarce carry on regardless.

I have made a compliant via there email service (not holding my breath for a reply) and then I am contacting the postal service ombudsman.

This is nothing short of daylight robbery.

Fifer

Maybe this isn't what you want to hear, but Parcel Force do have to undertake administration work to clear packages through C&E so it's not unreasonable to expect someone to have to pay for it (they are a business). If the sender paid, the cost would just be passed on to you as the customer anyway. I don't know if £8 is reasonable or not (I've heard of other couriers charging much more) but it's not valid to present it as a percentage of the VAT and claim it as an 80% handling fee. The amount of tax or duty collected is probably unrelated to the administration work involved which is what they are charging for.

santana-mx3

Royal Mail also charge an admin fee but in their case it's only £1.

I'm afraid we've been charged a lot more in the past by another carrier (not Parcelforce). We were sent a wedding present from an overseas relative. The carrier passed on Customs' duty and VAT which I suppose is fair. However, when the courier's own charges (including what amounted to rent for storing the parcel for a few days while they were waiting to tell us how much we had to pay them), admin fees, credit card fees (if wedidn't pay by credit card, we would have had to pay the daily rent charge until the cheque cleared) etc. were even more than the duty and VAT so our total bill came to just over £400 (which was actually also about the cost of the very generous gift).

I know they're a business and have to make money but this was a bit much! I was tempted not to have it but since it was a gift from an aunt, I couldn't very well refuse. She would already have spent a fortune sending it overseas and thought what she had paid covered everything and that the package would simply be delivered to our door. Also the carrier claimed we could be charged even more if we didn't collect it because we had already signed the form to confirm the goods were for us so we'd have to pay all the charges and the continued storage costs until it was sorted (I don't know if this is true but since we were accepting the goods anyway it made no difference).

Turning_into_scrooge

Fifer wrote:

Maybe this isn't what you want to hear, but Parcel Force do have to undertake administration work to clear packages through C&E so it's not unreasonable to expect someone to have to pay for it (they are a business). If the sender paid, the cost would just be passed on to you as the customer anyway. I don't know if £8 is reasonable or not (I've heard of other couriers charging much more) but it's not valid to present it as a percentage of the VAT and claim it as an 80% handling fee. The amount of tax or duty collected is probably unrelated to the administration work involved which is what they are charging for.

Can't remember the figure but fed ex do charge allot more than parcelforce. I understand the OP vent though. He didnt ask them to clear customs for him they automatically did it without his permission but you will never get round that.