US to UK import fees?

General
1

I just bought an expensive lot from the US off eBay. (a couple grand)

As I live in England the price of the import fees will be quite high. Around 20% VAT on the item on top of postage.

I was wondering is there any way to lower the import fees?

I know the seller could declare a lower amount on the custom forms. But that is somewhat illegal and unethical.

Any knowledge would be appreciated, especially if you are from England and or Europe.

Thanks

2

20% VAT Import and custom + handling fees…maybe around £16 plus any extra tax on the item. The only way Is if you hire Jonah Hill to smuggle it up his Ass :wink:

www.gov.uk/goods-sent-from-abroad/tax-and-duty

EDIT: Its usually hit and miss…however with such a large amount of money declared to customs…It will be pulled up IMO. Id read into it all and work out the extra cost for imports and custom charges plus VAT. For 1000 quid could be what…250 extra? Best bet is to call customs or the post office to enquire? or make sure you have the few hundred quid aside for when it arrived…the grey card through your letter box that is :wink:

Good luck! and hopefully someone has a proper answer for you :stuck_out_tongue:

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3

Yeah, have the package value declared at a few pounds, which is fraud, and also a felony in America.

Other than that there is no way around it.
It’s a frustrating dilemma and can make collecting in the EU rather demotivating sometimes.

Wether it’s unethical or not; it’s a bit of a gray area in my opinion.

4

In nearly 20 years not a single one of my customers, on or off eBay, has paid a customs fee.

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5

What if you were to ship a high value item? I would assume it is risky sending without insurance especially declared as low value gift

6

I’ve had 3 international insurance claims, 2 in the last 3 years, and I collected on all three. I simply tagged the amount paid and that was good enough. A hundred times my buyer didn’t want to pay for insurance so it was clear they assumed the risk. Never lost one of those packages though.
Twice I split a couple hundred dollar loss.

Now, just to be clear , there have been times the customers wanted full amount written on the customs form so ofcourse I did. But unless they asked for that, I always declared 19.00 except in Aus where I put whatever the buyer wanted.

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7

Of the dozens of things I shipped to everybody here on e4, did anybody ever have to pay a fee?

8

@garyis2000

Letters have been fine, I did pay some taxes for the package inc. 3 seperate PSA orders but that was mostly because shipping charges went anyways over customs charge limit.

9

All I’m gonna say is expect to pay vat and an import fee on the item plus handling. The chances of getting clocked for them depends on the carrier used. Parcelforce I find to be the most likely you will pay with royal mail being a 50/50 and DHL being your best hope for no fee.

10

I’m not from the UK, but from The Netherlands instead. But it depends on a lot of things.

Here in The Netherlands generally the following rules apply:

  • Orders within Europe are free of import fees regardless of the value.
  • Orders from outside Europe that are less than 22 euros in value are free of import fees.
  • Gifts from outside Europe that are less than 45 euros in value are free of import fees.
  • Every order above 22 euros, or gift above 45 euros, from outside Europe will include custom clearance costs and VAT taxes (BTW). And sometimes you’ll have additional PostNL costs on top of that, but usually no more than 10 euros.
  • And from 150 euros and upwards, it’s the same as the previous, but additional Custom fees on top of it.

Some more information for the Dutchman among us.

Then it still depends on how the package has been send. EMS will have a slightly higher custom clearance fee (€ 17.50) than USPS (€ 13.00). And some services like UPS and DHL will usually have their own custom clearance, so you won’t have to deal with import fees (or different import fees apply, but this depends on the sending service).

The reason I know this, is because currently an important card is held at Amsterdam’s customs for me, and I have to fill in a letter to provide additional information. I’ve made over 400 foreign orders in the past, and this is the first time I have received this letter… :slightly_frowning_face: This most likely means I’ll end up paying an additional ~250 euros on import fees again (once had to pay 325 euros import fees for a 1,600 USD package). Sigh… As if this card wasn’t expensive enough already. (No, I won’t spoil it yet. I will post it soon enough when I have it.)

Greetz,
Quuador

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11

it’s fucking painful man. i feel you.

12

Yeh. I just worked out the fees I probably have to pay. Around ÂŁ362 for everything. Hopefully not but I will find out in the next couple weeks.

Pray

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13

In Finland it’s the same like in the Netherlands in almost every way, but we don’t need to pay extra for our postal services and we don’t need to pay different amounts depending on how the package was sent. In general the rules in Europe with imports seem to be almost equal in many ways.

Sometimes some packages do slip through customs even if the value is higher than 22 euros and it comes from the US, for example DHL packages that come from the US don’t go to customs I’ve noticed. But I think it’s because they seem to go through customs in Germany before arriving to Finland.

And I feel you @quuador I’ve given up on getting some older booster boxes thanks to these import fees. Sometimes I see a good deal from the US but then I remember I’ll need to pay ridiculous amounts of extra so I just leave it :S

14

What’s unethical about declaring something as gift if you don’t mind me asking? I get that it’s fraud to declare it as a gift when it’s not. Government wants a share of international commercial businessdealings and it’s also to prevent international outsourcing from robbing opportunities of the country’s citizens but I feel like the rules are too restrictive and especially as a collector (not exactly business) with niche interests it sometimes becomes prohibitively expensive. Like with boosterboxes as someone mentioned, if you’re paying €3000 for a boosterbox for your personal collection, you’d have to pay import duties + taxes which comes down to an additional €800 (€141 import duties and €659 import taxes). Couple that with shipping it could run you almost a thousand euros extra. No one in their right mind would want to pay that and anyone who doesn’t have to worry about import duties has a huge advantage over the people who do. The people who do have to pay that have to keep those import duties/taxes in mind in their bid which makes their max bid much lower.

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15

European importing fees are just too restrictive.

In Portugal you will also have the 22€ maximum including shipping costs without being taxed, everything above and you are going to have a bad time. First because you will pay at least 25% more of what you paid originally and second because those guys in customs will try to maximise the money that they can get from you.

Out of experience, in here FedEx, DHL and services a like will also take advantage of the lower maximum value and will “deal with customs for you”. Which means that the package will, definitely, undoubtedly, no matter what stop in costums. This has the sole porpuse of paying the paperwork + customs handling of the company (not forgetting the actual customs fees, handling and paperwork).

Adding to these costums will also tweek with the formula to go above some percentages and hence you will have to pay more. (This happeneded to me with a flashlight for my bike) Its illegal, but the way to expose them is so difficult, and they keep things so secretive that everyone ends up giving up and stopping ordering stuff from abroad.

Affects the collector community of any type of collectable and its very unfair. Personally I have gave up on a lot of item due to this.

The funny thing is that when you enter the country from abroad (traveling for example) you have a 430€ allowance without being taxed.

I know US has something like 800$. Way way better and lucky you :grin:

Cheers!

1 Like
16

This reminds me of a very rare puzzle I was once looking for. After I saw a YouTube video of this puzzle (here is a link of this video for anyone remotely interested, a Roundy from 1991), I really liked the mechanism and uniqueness and wanted one for my twisty puzzles collection. It took almost a year of searching and waiting before one was put up on eBay. Shipping costs to The Netherlands: 105 USD… :angry: I was like, “Wtf… it’s about 200 grams tops… Are you gonna ship it in a metal crate or something?.. :confounded:” So I contacted the seller, and since they never shipped outside the US, they insisted of using the eBay shipping service from the US. He could lower it to 65 USD however, which at least was 40 USD lower… I had a max price of around 140 USD in mind, which was more than twice as much as my previous most expensive puzzle at the time, so my max bid was 75 USD. In the end it was sold for 90 USD to a US seller, which most likely only had to pay around 10 USD shipping… 40 USD below my total max, all because of the outrageous shipping fee… I was really bummed and pissed, because it was the first Roundy I saw for sale since I was looking for it.

Luckily another one popped up a few months later, which I was able to win for 135 USD including shipping if my memory serves me right. And I also bought a 3-wing version the month after from someone I knew from the TwistyPuzzles Forum. So now I have both a 4-Wing Roundy - Stegosaurus as well as a 3-Wing Roundy - Cooper & Lybrand. :grin:

Greetz,
Quuador

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