Random Rants
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Yeah, I know that people underdeclare…
I said "Should"...that obviously doesn't apply to german speaking bureucrats.
One should be very careful with that and know what you are doing. That is why I always go to customs office to declare my goods myself when they get stuck in customs.
If it's an Ebay item, our customs personnel check the auction by number, so no use to cheat on those.
If it's person to person deal, all I have ever needed is a copy of PayPal "invoice" Quite often that goes with normal webshopping as well.
Usually the tax is so low, that there is no use to underdeclare for taxes, it's the VAT which is ouch...
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Throw in the "reluctance" -this must qualify as the understatement of the day- of German customs officers to admit they were wrong. As I corresponded with them, spoke to them several times in person at their Berlin HQ (the hours of work that went into this, the taxpayer money wasted, all for three very old pairs of jeans….) I often felt it was no longer "on the merits", it was a "you or us" very hostile battle. Including using interview techniques on me like I only knew them from TV crime films, making me seemingly contradict myself and treating me very much like a criminal.
Clegg's old skating jeans now are somewhat of a trophy for me.....
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UK customs also "reserve the right" to investigate any packages whose value they don't believe.
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UK Customs is the reason I don't order from Rakuten very often. But, every time I do I get hit for a customs fee :(.
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Wow, I'm getting kinda dizzy reading all this customs talk. I definitly take for granted the US delivery system.
Probably because I havent had any problems with them yet..And I am very confident that you won't ever unless you ship tons of packages. I have lost a package only once in my many many transactions and they don't really seem to care about incoming value.
I moved to Canada and immediately had to start paying import fees, etc for things labeled with worth over $20.
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Just don't use DHL. I got a pair of shoes from Trickers and they decided I owed $15 in taxes (which didn't upset me) and $30 in administration fees (which did upset me).
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£75 in import and "handling" fees
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I'm going to look into it, as what they have done is charged the full value of a new pair of Smoke Jumpers, rather than the value stated on the package (doing a little research), but I don't rate my chances.
Handling was £12 from Parcelforce….assholes.
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How much was the "handling"??
Don't you have possibility to go to customs office yourself with all necessary paperwork?
Handling would have been about GBP13.50.
And no. Parcel Force (EMS) brings all their stuff in through East Midlands airport. It is there that they customs charges are applied. They do not get applied at the local level. By the time the shipment get's to the local depot it will only be released if you pay all the charges levied upon the parcel by the Customs people in East Midlands.
At this point you have 3 choices:
- Refuse to pay in which case you never see your parcel again
- Bitch and moan but this will get you nowhere as it is not the local depots responsibility
- Pay and then try and get a refund (hardly worth the effort because they make it that way)
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That's shitty situation.
Here we have options for packages arriving through mail:
1. Do a online declaration over the web (no handling fees), parcel shipped to you after payment.
2. Inform customs which customs office the parcel is to be sent for declaration, and do it yourself over the counter (again no handling fees)
3. Let the Finnish Post do the declaring (handling fee applied) and the parcel is shipped to you after you have paid. -
Giles is right, any complain about is a major waste of time, since it will lead you next to nothing, I have tried that…
and thats why I really hate to buy stuff out of Europe, since usual I either have to pay money for stuff I m not responsible for, nor care about, or I have to drive to the customs office and waste my time....on the other hand check the bill carefully, I had it once that UPS thought that 35+17 would sum up to 72...
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£75 in import and "handling" fees
now that fekkin sucks,,blatant extortion,,all because you cannot buy em in the UK
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As Giles says, my only possibility of any refund is by printing the email I got from Whites which values the boots at $250 (the rebuild cost), and sending it as proof that customs have "over valued" them. In the slim chance that this would work I would receive a refund of around £22, hardly worth the effort.
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OK, I can beat all this. So read and give thanks.
I sold a pair of Vibergs to a regular customer in Indonesia. They cost him USD750 shipped.
3 days later a take a phone call from UPS telling me that the customer has refused to take delivery as the taxes etc were the Indonesian Rupiah equivalent of nearly USD800. Yes you read that right - cost of boots USD750, taxes USD800…I told UPS to tell the Indonesian Customs where they could put their USD800 and they should ship the boots back to me.
Here comes the lovely bit. Although the goods are still airside, I was told the only way they would send them back to me was if I paid the USD800. If I failed to do so the goods would be "destroyed", which meant that some feckin Indonesian customs person would be walking home in them.
Complete and utter impasse.
In the end I did a deal with my customer, he paid the USD800 in taxes etc and I refunded him USD750. Once we got into this vortex, I was always going to lose at least USD800 (I had to pay to ship the things to Indonesia), but I was fecked if some sleazy, crooked customs official was going to wear my boots.....
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OK, I can beat all this. So read and give thanks.
I sold a pair of Vibergs to a regular customer in Indonesia. They cost him USD750 shipped.
3 days later a take a phone call from UPS telling me that the customer has refused to take delivery as the taxes etc were the Indonesian Rupiah equivalent of nearly USD800. Yes you read that right - cost of boots USD750, taxes USD800…I told UPS to tell the Indonesian Customs where they could put their USD800 and they should ship the boots back to me.
Here comes the lovely bit. Although the goods are still airside, I was told the only way they would send them back to me was if I paid the USD800. If I failed to do so the goods would be "destroyed", which meant that some feckin Indonesian customs person would be walking home in them.
Complete and utter impasse.
In the end I did a deal with my customer, he paid the USD800 in taxes etc and I refunded him USD750. Once we got into this vortex, I was always going to lose at least USD800 (I had to pay to ship the things to Indonesia), but I was fecked if some sleazy, crooked customs official was going to wear my boots.....
thanks given,,,buying and selling across different continents is a fekkin minefield,,and we wonder why ppl get fekked off ,,,oh to live in a non greedy environment
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Yep, that is abysmal on a huge scale. Nothing like people/ organisations with power abusing that power is there
