Customs charges

markmat

foxsake wrote:

this is true i was charged £20 in vat and duty and a flat rate £20 admin fee from parcelforce.

One of my pet hates :mad: I can understand that the courier/delivery companies may (in the past anyway) have incurred some costs in processing the customs fees.

However, a) surely that's one of the costs of operating their business, and should be built in to their pricing (I appreciate that the Royal Mail have no control over what they are asked to deliver, but DHL etc. do).
b) I refuse to believe that it costs a nice round £10 or £20 to do this. The last thing I paid a fee on was a DHL delivery where the whole thing was fully automated, with the customs charge calculated using the declared value and the shipping costs. If this realy costs £10 per transaction then they surely need to be looking at their IT development costs!

lady_lucan

Having been brickwalled by drugstore.com, comerxia and parcelforce international, I rang UK Customs to see if they could shed any light. I previously had a very negative (derivative) view of Customs, but I have to say their service was impeccable. The woman I spoke to explained clearly and in great detail how to make a recompense claim, and expressed interest that comerxia were claiming to cover these charges for the fee they levy. I took a few notes on ending the call and thought no more about it.

Only about 10 minutes could have elapsed when she rang back, saying that comerxia orders in fact ship to an international handling depot in Germany, before being sent on to the UK. In this way comerxia manage to evade duties, as goods sent from one EU country to another do not incur charges, unless they can be proven to be non EU goods (which my American brands obviously could). So in fact comerxia are levying a mysterious customs charge for doing precisely naff all, whilst erroneously (and fraudulently) claiming to their international customers that everything's covered.

I shall take great relish in demanding the return of my 'customs fee' from these clowns for services not rendered.

A thought - the transaction was paid for via Paypal: what recompense does Paypal offer on non-eBay transactions? I can track it back to the standing credit card account if needs be.

The real irony of all this is that the standard footer on the fob-off email drugstore.com sent me today reads 'A Very Healthy Way to Shop'. Oh, my sides...