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Royal Mail's £8 "Handling Fee"
andersonsonson
Posts: 6,454 Forum Member
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Ordered some stuff from USA, and the total came to £20. Anything over £15, means VAT is added and duty has to be paid. Royal Mail charges me the duty and VAT, plus their £8 handling fee. I would have thought £2 would have been fair, but £8 FURIOUS!
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Royal Mail has been privatised and therefore they have a duty to make as much profit for their shareholders as they can.
This handling charges has been around for a while
IIRC about 5 years at the current level, and something like 5-10 years+ before that at £4.
It's hardly a secret and it costs RM no less to deal with a £16 package that has customs due than a £160 one, as the paperwork is the same and they have to hold it securely the same, from memory it has to go in a locker/locked room at the depots that only certain staff have access to*, unlike say undelivered parcels which are often held on a shelf behind the counter.
It surprises me that people (not yourself) don't realise this before importing, especially as the information is easily available, and most foreign websites specifically mention that the buyer may be liable for import taxes and fees.
For general information, different couriers charge different handling fees.
IIRC DHL (who are far more expensive for the initial delivery fee), charge about £2** for clearance for home user, but it's offset by the higher initial fees.
UPS and Fed-ex charger a flat rate tenner (in addition to high initial costs).
Parcel Force charge £8 for standard deliveries with customs outstanding and i think £16 for priority ones.
*I'm not sure if the package effectively remains the property of HMRC (due to outstanding monies owed to the government) at that point, of if RM pay the tax in advance.
**I think it's £2 or £1.25 as a flat fee until the value exceeds £100 then it's something like 2% of the value.
I ordered something from the States 3 or 4 years ago; still had to pay the £8 handiling fee.
Well, remember you did knowingly steal that laptop from Tesco.
Karma?
£8 is cheap.
The admin' charges from couriers vary enormously, in my experience, from about £10 to over £50.
Worst I had was ordering a gear-knob off eBay which turned out to be coming from Australia.
Gear knob cost about £12 and the courier wanted £50-odd in admin' charges.
I told them they could f**king-well keep it. >:(
Funny thing is, it's actually against the law to withhold post in order to secure payment of charges, a fact which few couriers seem to adhere to unless you challenge them about it.
£2 is what it used to be. Problem is (in London at least) the customs clearance unit is in the same building as Royal Mail so now RM is incenitivised to root out all those £15+ international packages, drag (and I do mean DRAG) them upstairs and then collect £8 per packet for doing so.
They weren`t making any money when they were charging two quid and consequently very little got nabbed for customs but now it`s £8 very few escape unscathed. A nice little earner for them...........
The Canadian bank did sod all, and yet helped themselves to $38 CDN of the funds. Almost 24 effing quid! >:( And I thought PayPal were robbing bar stewards.
They're slippery buggers too.
If they "believe" the value of a parcel to be incorrectly stated they're allowed to make their own estimate of the real value.
Trouble is, I've been in situations where a parcel has genuinely had a low value (lumps of brass tubing) but the RM has decided that the invoice was a lie, charged me VAT, Duty and an admin' charge and then, even if I can prove that the VAT & Duty weren't warranted, I can't claim back the £16-odd admin' fee so they get to keep that money. >:(
It wouldn't be them. HMRC decide whether and how much duty is payable. The RM would just be told how much to collect (but they would charge the admin fee)
You can pay online then either request home delivery or pick up yourself.
Not sure about that.
When a plane load of stuff comes into the country, surely HMRC only gets to know about it because RM brings it to their attention?
Unless there's somebody from HMRC inspecting every parcel and making the decision about whether it's due for tax, it seems like it'd be up to the RM to draw it to their attention.
Must admit, I have know idea about the mechanics of it though.
I just know that I've bought £10 of thin-walled copper tubing from China and then been told it must really be worth £20-odd, been forced to pay about £4 in tax and duty as well as a £16 admin' charge and then, if I go to the effort of disputing the tax, I can only get the £4 back and the RM get to keep the £16 admin' fee even though it shouldn't actually have been needed to begin with.
Yep, customs only see it once RM have brought it to their attention. In essence that`s what RM is getting the £8 for (along with paperwork).
Customs limit used to be £18 but when they dropped it to £15 they kept VERY quiet about it in order to catch seasoned personal importers unawares. Bastards.
Even the £18 limit was pathetically low. Just a licence to print money for the HMRC and Post Office, by fleecing people, once again.
It's like HMRC used to not charge late filers of tax returns penalty charges, if no tax was payable. Then they changed that as well, so you got the standard late filing penalty of £100. You can't win with these people. Not only do they expect you to do all the work yourself for self-assessment returns, they add insult to injury by charging you for late filing of returns.
Not to mention HMRC has been guilty of many illegal IMO confiscations of vehicles deemed to have exceeded transport of import allowances/goods, when the whole idea was to have unlimited transport of goods between EU members. The reason being is that tax on cigarettes and alcohol is higher in the UK than in most EU member countries, so it's a nice little earner for the government. Yet another bum deal from being in the EU, which is why I want out. For the UK, we get few of the advantages of EU membership, but most of the disadvantages and we pay for it big time.
Sorry, to digress a bit, but it is all part and parcel (excuse the pun) of the same thing.
My dad used to say that many taxes and duties were legalised theft and I agree.
I made the same mistake once and never again. I had a good moan at the guy in the PO when I collected my package. Not his fault I know, but I hate getting ripped off and having shit customer service.
You can import stuff up to the value of $1000 in Aus without paying any taxes. Makes our £18 limit look even more stupid.
It does seem a bit hit and miss. I don't import much stuff at all but recently bought 100 razor blades from Thailand and a lucky pouch from Australia (made from a kangaroo scrotum BTW). the latter was over £18 but neither package attracted VAT or handling.
If it gets re-routed through European shipping hubs then you can get away with it as it gets an EU postage label added on which confuses RM enough to leave it alone. Amazon.com usually does this meaning stuff turns up at your door like regular post. I say usually because sometimes it doesn`t and there`s no way of knowing in advance which makes for squeaky bum time as you wait for it to arrive!
I`ve ordered a lot of stuff from Australia over the years and can`t ever recall getting a charge for any of it whereas I`ve paid hundreds in charges for stuff from the US since the late nineties.
I've imported restricted gun parts from the USA (an evil AR15 receiver which is probably going to start killing people any day soon) and they've arrived on my doorstep without hindrance.
That certainly did make for an interesting conversation with the people from HMRC.
Another little trick is if something on Amazon.co.uk is listed just over £15 from a marketplace importer, you can probably find it under £15 on ebay as they can charge actual delivery charges vs Amazon's fixed £1.24 charge.
A couple of experiences spring to mind. One involving myself, another a friend.
Mine involved purchase of a Camera from a company in New York. The retail price was clear as also was the postal rate to UK and all import charges.
The friend involved purchased a specialist Camera bag which, in the UK was very expensive. I ran a worldwide search on eBay for him and came up with a Dealer in Canada selling the exact bag at £80.......less than half the UK price.
In both cases all postal rates, tax and import charges were made totally clear at the point of purchase.
The bag my friend purchased had been exported to Canada from a company based in Wolverhampton.....just 50 miles down the road from where he lives!