Cyclist "made the mistake of ordering bike components from the EU"... left with £50 of customs charges; Jumbo-Visma Twitter account hacked — crypto adverts galore; Einer Rubio wins Giro mountain stage shortened due to bad weather + more on the live blog

Pyro Tim wrote:

They might arrange shipping for you, but ultimately once it's left their warehouse, that's the end of their responsibility.

Not entirely true under distance selling regulations. It'd be entirely feasible to refuse to pay the import duties and then claim your money back from the seller as they hadn't fulfilled their side of the contract i.e. delivering the items to your address.

They've provided all the info in their FAQs 

"If you select a delivery country outside the EU, prices are automatically calculated without German value added tax (VAT). All customs duties, taxes and fees due for your order are collected by the respective authorities when your shipment enters the destination country. To obtain further information on the relevant regulations in your country, please contact your local customs or taxation office."

The fact Stan has chosen to not read or he has and then ignored this information is only his fault, whinging about it on the internet just makes him look a bit of a cheapskate, could've supported a LBS instead.

That hardly amounts to "all the info " !

I'm curious what more woud you like them to add?

You can answer that by comparing your answer with the invoice shown.

"All customs duties, taxes and fees due for your order are collected by the respective authorities when your shipment enters the destination country." You mean like these ones they've stayed you'll be liable for, which then he was so shocked to have to pay?
They aren't those companies/countries why should they pay to list the details, of hundreds of separate entities, on their website when that information is already out there?
If you've spent enough time trawling online bike shops trying to save less than the £50 in fees paid, you have the ability to look up the relevant information.

How would you know beforehand what the actual fees and charges are ?
All you listed were potential costs and that the end user knows who to contact at the relevant tax authority.
You are assuming a very high level of knowledge and application somewhat beyond 'looking it up'.
I can look up vat advice and rates. - did I know enough about vat ? Hell yes, enough to know I know eff all.

Springbok45 wrote:

They've provided all the info in their FAQs 

"...To obtain further information on the relevant regulations in your country, please contact your local customs or taxation office."

Yeah good luck getting that information from the customs office.

Likewise getting the delivery company's clearance fees. Especially as you probably wont be told who they are.

bikeman01 wrote:

Yeah good luck getting that information from the customs office.

https://www.trade-tariff.service.gov.uk/find_commodity

https://www.simplyduty.com/

As long as you have prior knowledge and are fully conversant with all the technicalities, general rules and exceptions.
There is a reason why tax specialists exist.

A little knowledge is dangerous.

https://www.gov.uk/import-goods-into-uk
Google is your friend, first result of "importing to the UK" it takes you into all the necessary points in pretty plain English, it's almost like the civil service put this together for anyone to understand rather than providing "tax specialists" with business.
Being obtuse for the sake of it just makes you look as silly as Stan.

https://www.parcelforce.com/help-and-advice/receiving/how-are-customs-fe...

Yep, super secret fees hidden away from all of us.

Distance selling rules don't apply to overseas companies, you are into INCO terms and international rules. Which is why some companies just refuse to do it.

You could argue that they haven't fulfilled their contract, but if the contract is DAP, or DDU as it was, you are in breach for not clearing. If you do demand a refund they'll likely keep the shipping cost back, as although they can get goods back, it costs, and you will foot the bill. Unless they make a commercial decision otherwise.

Once you are into international trade, the rules change, and domestic rules don't necessarily apply. You are an intelligent chap, why so hard to comprehend?

Pyro Tim wrote:

They might arrange shipping for you, but ultimately once it's left their warehouse, that's the end of their responsibility.

Again, that seems very unlikely considering contract law, but presumably that would need a court case to fully judge on that. It'd be fairly easy to reverse a credit card transaction if there was non-delivery of an item and it wouldn't matter if the supplier said that they were only responsible for it leaving their warehouse.

I was going to buy a saddle from a German brand until I saw a note on their website that they don't ship to the UK now.

That's their commercial decision. Nothing stopping them, other than they don't want to deal with moaning Brits. Can't say I blame them, based on the comments on here

Pyro Tim wrote:

The law is the law, and ignorance is no excuse. Your responsibility, not someone in another country. If you want to import, you have to know. If you don't / can't be arsed, buy it from UK from someone who has checked and complied. The rules are complicated enough, I know UK customs, and a little of EU, based on what it was here before Brexit, but nothing of US or anywhere else. It is not my responsibilty to know foreign rules, just as it isn't a bike shop in Germany to know our rules.

But as has been written elsewhere, half the time you don't even know that the online shop is overseas.  Pricing in GBP, site all in English.  I got nearly to paying on a site for something recently when I thought, "Hang on!" and dug around on the site to find out where they were.  Ten minutes later, it turned out that the site was actually in Spain.  So I didn't proceed with the order.

Fair point, but some have a warehouse here, so although they are in Spain, or somewhere else, they ship from UK, and it includes VAT and duty. They should be clearer though

Pyro Tim wrote:

The law is the law, and ignorance is no excuse. Your responsibility, not someone in another country. If you want to import, you have to know. If you don't / can't be arsed, buy it from UK from someone who has checked and complied. The rules are complicated enough, I know UK customs, and a little of EU, based on what it was here before Brexit, but nothing of US or anywhere else. It is not my responsibilty to know foreign rules, just as it isn't a bike shop in Germany to know our rules.

You seem to be missing the point that import duty and clearance fees only become due when the seller hasn't included vat in the transaction. As all retail prices in the UK include vat it is not surprising that buyers assume that the price they pay would already include vat. 

It is also the case that many buyers would not even know that the seller was outside of the UK since many adopt a practice of hiding behind a .co.uk website and do not publish their postal address.

Not all retail prices in the UK include VAT. It is common in building/plumbing merchants to exclude VAT as most (but not all) of their customers are trade and will be reclaiming the VAT anyway.

If you find a ecommerce website that does not include a "geographic" address then be very wary as it is the law that one must be shown within one click of the homepage.

Any good seller is going to make clear the VAT status and I recently bought from the US and paid a sum to cover all charges to my home address. This meant it went smoothly but if HMRC forgot to charge the VAT as they often do the seller gets the benefit.

mark1a wrote:

Person buys VAT free stuff from overseas. Then whines on Twitter about having to pay VAT on receipt.

quite, the only thing to complain about would be the clearance fee, which doesn't seem all that bad. I can remember recieving packages from the US with £7 customs charge and £30 clearance fee, that always seemed unreasonable to me.

mark1a wrote:

Person buys VAT free stuff from overseas. Then whines on Twitter about having to pay VAT on receipt.

The point is that it is no longer clear as to what charges you may face (without holding a degree in import/export bollocks). Brexit is a total f...up, fostered by a bunch of gaslighters praying on an ignorant population.

Legin wrote:

The point is that it is no longer clear as to what charges you may face (without holding a degree in import/export bollocks). Brexit is a total f...up, fostered by a bunch of gaslighters praying on an ignorant population.

Well, at least we get to enjoy all the tangible benefits

mark1a wrote:

Person buys VAT free stuff from overseas. Then whines on Twitter about having to pay VAT on receipt.

This issue behind it though is the impact on business, and the inability to ship between UK/EU and vice versa without a massive headache.

I shipped a used piece of network equipment from an office back to the UK and made the mistake of putting an insurance value of the new price, around £4k. This then triggered a whole heap of problems where even TNT couldn't seem to figure it out, at one point we almost gave up as we were facing a £1k or so bill for something bought some years back in UK that was shipped out and coming back now.

Since then where we would previously source from UK for EU offices we were working on, which would hand quite a lot of business to UK suppliers, it is all handled by our Paris office. The red tape is so bad it genuiniely pushed our procurement person to the brink of a breakdown. I don't doubt this has forced some small businesses to give up completely. But hey blue passports and sovereignty! woop woop.

Adam Sutton wrote:

This issue behind it though is the impact on business, and the inability to ship between UK/EU and vice versa without a massive headache.

I agree, it's a mess and businesses were not prepared. However that is not the issue here. The issue here is that someone bought some bike parts from Germany which would have been much cheaper at the point of order due to not having German VAT at 19% charged. Local VAT of 20% is then applied on import. Much of the effect of this would have happened regardless of whether we were in the EU or not due to new regulations designed to reduce VAT fraud. The duty of 6% is minimal, and possibly the Parcelforce processing charge is getting on for unreasonable. 

6% might be "minimal" to the end user, but is significant in red tape and additional process for the companies involved. That was my point. This just highlights these issues.

Adam Sutton wrote:

mark1a wrote:

Person buys VAT free stuff from overseas. Then whines on Twitter about having to pay VAT on receipt.

This issue behind it though is the impact on business, and the inability to ship between UK/EU and vice versa without a massive headache.

I shipped a used piece of network equipment from an office back to the UK and made the mistake of putting an insurance value of the new price, around £4k. This then triggered a whole heap of problems where even TNT couldn't seem to figure it out, at one point we almost gave up as we were facing a £1k or so bill for something bought some years back in UK that was shipped out and coming back now.

Since then where we would previously source from UK for EU offices we were working on, which would hand quite a lot of business to UK suppliers, it is all handled by our Paris office. The red tape is so bad it genuiniely pushed our procurement person to the brink of a breakdown. I don't doubt this has forced some small businesses to give up completely. But hey blue passports and sovereignty! woop woop.

My work team (I'm in the US) wrote off a $50k data acquisition system we installed on a machine which was then shipped to Europe for some testing. It got stuck in customs somewhere on the way back and after several months it was just too much hassle trying to convince them that it wasn't new equipment that we were importing.