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!
Sounds like a bargain to me.
I've never been charged less than £12.50 for an import administration fee and I've been charged up to £50!
*EDIT*
And, to be clear here, I'm talking solely about the admin' fee, alone, and not including any tax or duty that was also payable.
IIRC, it was DHL who tried to charge me a £50 admin' fee for importing a BMW M3 gear-knob from Oz which cost £18 and had a couple of quid tax and duty to be paid.
I told them to keep it.
HMRC refunded the £11 wrongly charged VAT. However, they don't refund the £8 handling fee levied by the Royal Mail.
Does anyone know how to get this back?
Many thanks for interesting discussion.
Malcolm
Personally, I think this is a deliberate scam by the various courier companies (including Royal Mail).
There's no law or rule which says a company must bypass the admin' process for any parcel with a declared value of less than £15.
So, theoretically, a company can go through the admin' procedure for every parcel they handle and levy the admin' fee regardless of whether any tax and duty are actually payable or not.
I won't order anything from the US now since being caught for these charges.
Fed-ex send you a separate demand through the post for £14.I thought it was a scam at first and was going to tear the letter up,Bearing in mind you have already paid quite substantial postage on the order.But I investigated through a forum and found it was usual practise and I think they can take the money through the credit card you used in the first place, not entirely sure of this,it was a while ago but seem to remember reading something of the sort.
I ordered a t-shirt over 2 weeks ago, it's only just arrived in the UK this weekend. Mark my words, it'll go from Stansted (less than 30 miles from me) to near Birmingham to go back to near Watford... Into Yodel's hands
Royal Mail would have had it here in under a week.
I wish Yodel would pi$$ off back to Holland.
The Royal Mail sell-off is the biggest ConDem fail of them all
Fed-ex send you a separate demand through the post for £14.I thought it was a scam at first and was going to tear the letter up,Bearing in mind you have already paid quite substantial postage on the order.But I investigated through a forum and found it was usual practise...
Funny thing there is, you've actually got to give fed-ex some credit for that.
There is a law which says that a company isn't allow to delay delivery of post as leverage for obtaining payment and yet, when it comes to import admin' fees, this is exactly what almost every courier service does.
It's certainly unpleasant when you get the invoice from fed-ex but at least they don't hold your f**king parcel to ransom in order to get paid.
If HMRC have refunded you, you need to contact RM with the proof of HMRC's refund and from memory RM will then refund you.
That's never worked for me.
Even if a package doesn't incur any duty or VAT, HMRC is allowed to intercept it if they have "reason to believe" it is.
Which means that the courier company can justify needing to do the admin' work to get it through the inspection regardless of whether any tax is payable or not.
Comments
Does anyone know how to get this back?
Many thanks for interesting discussion.
Malcolm
Sounds like a bargain to me.
I've never been charged less than £12.50 for an import administration fee and I've been charged up to £50!
*EDIT*
And, to be clear here, I'm talking solely about the admin' fee, alone, and not including any tax or duty that was also payable.
IIRC, it was DHL who tried to charge me a £50 admin' fee for importing a BMW M3 gear-knob from Oz which cost £18 and had a couple of quid tax and duty to be paid.
I told them to keep it.
Personally, I think this is a deliberate scam by the various courier companies (including Royal Mail).
There's no law or rule which says a company must bypass the admin' process for any parcel with a declared value of less than £15.
So, theoretically, a company can go through the admin' procedure for every parcel they handle and levy the admin' fee regardless of whether any tax and duty are actually payable or not.
I've had this happen a heap of times.
Exactly.
Send the bill to the loser idiot Vince Cable and complain to your local MP, especially is they are a Tory >:(
Fed-ex send you a separate demand through the post for £14.I thought it was a scam at first and was going to tear the letter up,Bearing in mind you have already paid quite substantial postage on the order.But I investigated through a forum and found it was usual practise and I think they can take the money through the credit card you used in the first place, not entirely sure of this,it was a while ago but seem to remember reading something of the sort.
I ordered a t-shirt over 2 weeks ago, it's only just arrived in the UK this weekend. Mark my words, it'll go from Stansted (less than 30 miles from me) to near Birmingham to go back to near Watford... Into Yodel's hands
Royal Mail would have had it here in under a week.
I wish Yodel would pi$$ off back to Holland.
The Royal Mail sell-off is the biggest ConDem fail of them all
Funny thing there is, you've actually got to give fed-ex some credit for that.
There is a law which says that a company isn't allow to delay delivery of post as leverage for obtaining payment and yet, when it comes to import admin' fees, this is exactly what almost every courier service does.
It's certainly unpleasant when you get the invoice from fed-ex but at least they don't hold your f**king parcel to ransom in order to get paid.
If HMRC have refunded you, you need to contact RM with the proof of HMRC's refund and from memory RM will then refund you.
That's never worked for me.
Even if a package doesn't incur any duty or VAT, HMRC is allowed to intercept it if they have "reason to believe" it is.
Which means that the courier company can justify needing to do the admin' work to get it through the inspection regardless of whether any tax is payable or not.