Foreign orders.

[edwin]

Just had a notice from parcel force re a parcel from Franzose that is valued at €230.

Customs duty is £12.61
Import VAT is £58.55
Clearance fee £12

Total £83.16

Anyone got any experience of this ? My other two parcels had none of these charges, so why on this, which is R4 brake refurb parts, hoses etc. In the letter there is no expectation of me questioning it.

 

[Vicki Cooper]

I placed an order on July 16th with Franzose at just over €100, I didn’t have to pay anything further. It was 2x shoebox size and no more than 1kg in weight.
The parcel was delivered by DHL - amazingly 4 days later (inc a weekend).
I’d contact Franzose using their contact form (link given below) and ask them just in case this is dodgy, akin to the Post Office email scam or it might be legitimate based on size/weight of your shipment.

Kontakt - Der Franzose Automobiltechnik GmbH - Citroen - Peugeot - Renault - Pieces classique - CiPeRe.fr Französische Automobilkultur

www.franzose.de

 

[edwin]

Hi Vicki. Thanks for the post. I have been trawling through customs info on GOV.UK which is like swimming through the Sargasso Sea ! It appears that a parcel must not have a value, including shipping costs, of more than £135, in order to be custom charges exempt. My first two parcels were in the €125 area, and so no charges, the last €230 ish and so we get the charges, which appear to be about 33% on top, so about €105 on top of the €230 making it about €335 finally. Lesson for all of us. Better to get two lower value parcels than one bigger one.
I have gone through the parcel force process, and its all legit, but very little explanatory information, probably so that you can't make the judgment above.

 

[Vicki Cooper]

Yikes, thanks very much for the tip. I was lucky, kept thinking what else I could add to my order to try to make the most of the delivery cost Just googled and this link from Moneysaving expert popped up. https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/buying-online-from-europe-post-brexit/

 

[happybutsimple]

Hello!
I’ve had an order from Franzose this month too. They’ve split it up into three parts; one parcel arrived on its own, without extra customs charges. I had a message from Parcel Force as you described to pay to release from customs, the charges sound similar to yours-I paid up and it appeared the next day. The third has been passed through customs without an extra charge and is somewhere in this country……
All parcels were sent by DHL and I could track them from the emails from Franzose.
hope this helps!

 

[reidalpine]

and here I was thinking you paid the Vat/tax/mv in the EU-country you placed order in and so there would not be anymore fees/tax to pay when you received it to your address.....Am I wrong here? Or has the idea of the EU gone to smithereens? Or-has this to do with you britons leaving the EU ?
(I like Der Franzose, don't get me wrong -but zhey are ze epitome of finicky sticklers to rules & regulazions ie: Ordnung Must sein...)
-Reid.

 

[Simon Knight]

Hi happybutsimple, can I ask were either of the parcels that arrived tariff free over the £135 limit?

Cheers Simon.

 

[JdeW]

and here I was thinking you paid the Vat/tax/mv in the EU-country you placed order in and so there would not be anymore fees/tax to pay when you received it to your address.....Am I wrong here? Or has the idea of the EU gone to smithereens? Or-has this to do with you britons leaving the EU ?
(I like Der Franzose, don't get me wrong -but zhey are ze epitome of finicky sticklers to rules & regulazions ie: Ordnung Must sein...)
-Reid.

Hmmm Has it indeed to do with hopeless EU regulations? I'm not the expert, I'm just very much against the EU and it's regulations in the "Ordnung muss sein..." way. Not to mention we pay loads of billions just to save the hopeless Greek economy and other hopeless EU-member economies...
The only truth is that when GB left the EU, things got only better and better for GB...

 

[Lobster]

The only truth is that when GB left the EU, things got only better and better for GB...

If only...

Basically the whole customs charge etc is a result of Brexit. Goods coming in from EU are subject to customs duty on entering UK and similar going the other way... EU suppliers can (but don't have to) register for UK VAT which makes it easier to sell stuff to UK consumers but more bureaucratic for them. Its been the same if you've tried to import stuff from outside the UK - most noticeably USA - for ages. Its the same reason that Mister Auto won't now supply UK customers and why I used to have a business importing stuff from EU and selling a good chunk or it back to EU based customers and now, well, I don't

Its worth noting that the £135 'limit' for customs exemption on goods entering the UK from EU is due to end anytime (basically when they get their stuff together and start enforcing it) and that charges will be applicable on absolutely everything regardless of cost.

There's a lot of things than aren't right with the EU, but my god, what have we done now. However, lets not get all political. Its probably for the best not to!

 

[happybutsimple]

Hi happybutsimple, can I ask were either of the parcels that arrived tariff free over the £135 limit?

Cheers Simon.

Hello Simon
The only parcel to arrive tariff free had a worth of £152 …!
So no rhyme or reason to that!
The last parcel is due tomorrow and I had to pay around £50 to release that.

Katie

 

[edwin]

If only...

Basically the whole customs charge etc is a result of Brexit. Goods coming in from EU are subject to customs duty on entering UK and similar going the other way... EU suppliers can (but don't have to) register for UK VAT which makes it easier to sell stuff to UK consumers but more bureaucratic for them. Its been the same if you've tried to import stuff from outside the UK - most noticeably USA - for ages. Its the same reason that Mister Auto won't now supply UK customers and why I used to have a business importing stuff from EU and selling a good chunk or it back to EU based customers and now, well, I don't

Its worth noting that the £135 'limit' for customs exemption on goods entering the UK from EU is due to end anytime (basically when they get their stuff together and start enforcing it) and that charges will be applicable on absolutely everything regardless of cost.

There's a lot of things than aren't right with the EU, but my god, what have we done now. However, lets not get all political. Its probably for the best not to!

The thing is, that its our customs doing it to us. Its not the Euro's its the Brits doing it to them selves. We have returned to the 50's, and I would not be surprised if soon you will only be able to bring over two bottles of wine, just like then. These people are hired by us, get civil service pensions paid by us, get great work conditions paid by us and then inflict arbitrary import penalties on us. We are buying personally. If they inflicted it on foreign company imports thats one thing. But what we want is such very small beer, and its for personal use, not for sale.

 

[benchseat]

It has been the law in the UK, even before Brexit, that imported items should be charged Import Duty and VAT. That has been the case ever since VAT was introduced in 1973 (which was a result of our having joined the EU!). These are charges which benefit the UK tax system, hence (indirectly) all UK taxpayers in the long run. It is not a ‘result of Brexit’ as #lobster says : it is simply that before Brexit everything was a bit casual.

Brexit gave HMRC the pretext to tighten all this up. It also applies in other areas. For example, in certain circumstances eBay now collects VAT on items purchased from outside the UK — you might have noticed this already. And by the same token, if you sell something on eBay, you may sometimes have noticed extra taxes, paid by the purchaser, such as local sales taxes (e.g. Australia, certain American states).

One obvious way round this is to have the Customs form on the parcel declare a lower value than the actual contents. But this has consequences if the parcel is insured : the insurance will only pay out on the declared value.

Import Duty dates from before Brexit. According to online sources, since the fourteenth century.

Basically (this with my former tax consultant hat on) tax law ensures that one can have one’s cake once only. And saying that items which would suffer VAT if they were UK-origin should be VAT-free if imported is wanting to have one’s cake and eat it.

 

[Lobster]

It is not a ‘result of Brexit’ as #lobster says : it is simply that before Brexit everything was a bit casual.

But before Brexit, we were in a free trade area [the EU] and hence customs charges were only applicable to goods arriving from outside the Euro zone. It wasn't casual, it just wasn't applicable to goods moving within the EU. If you imported goods from USA then customs charges were always applied religiously. So now that we are now outside of the EU, anything arriving into 'our' customs area [UK] is chargeable. That is a result of Brexit insofar as we are now outside of the EU so any parcels arriving from there (or pretty much anywhere else for that matter) are now subject to import charges. Import Duty isn't because or caused by Brexit and has been a thing for ages, as @benchseat says, that we are now having to pay them is because Brexit took us out of the free trade area.

 

[André4Renaults]

It has been the law in the UK, even before Brexit, that imported items should be charged Import Duty and VAT. That has been the case ever since VAT was introduced in 1973 (which was a result of our having joined the EU!). These are charges which benefit the UK tax system, hence (indirectly) all UK taxpayers in the long run. It is not a ‘result of Brexit’ as #lobster says : it is simply that before Brexit everything was a bit casual.

Brexit gave HMRC the pretext to tighten all this up. It also applies in other areas. For example, in certain circumstances eBay now collects VAT on items purchased from outside the UK — you might have noticed this already. And by the same token, if you sell something on eBay, you may sometimes have noticed extra taxes, paid by the purchaser, such as local sales taxes (e.g. Australia, certain American states).

One obvious way round this is to have the Customs form on the parcel declare a lower value than the actual contents. But this has consequences if the parcel is insured : the insurance will only pay out on the declared value.

Import Duty dates from before Brexit. According to online sources, since the fourteenth century.

Basically (this with my former tax consultant hat on) tax law ensures that one can have one’s cake once only. And saying that items which would suffer VAT if they were UK-origin should be VAT-free if imported is wanting to have one’s cake and eat it.

As an (almost retired-well in 6 months!) Officer of H.M.R.C. (that's Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, that used to be Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise before they were merged....KEEP UP, I'll be asking questions later) I can confirm the above to be an accurate summation of the situation both pre and post Brexit. As a still serving civil servant I'm forbidden from entering into any arguments regarding Brexit, but I would say that it is blamed for many things about which it has no connection!

 

[Simon Knight]

Hi Katie, thanks for the reply, I'm just about to order from Franzose so I guess I'll just have to see what happens. I somehow think I'll end up paying lot extra.

Cheers Simon.

 

[happybutsimple]

Hi Katie, thanks for the reply, I'm just about to order from Franzose so I guess I'll just have to see what happens. I somehow think I'll end up paying lot extra.

Cheers Simon.

hello! Simon, I have a basket full of goodies I'm about to order too- it's a shame we dont live nearer to each other, we could be sharing the shipping costs !!
Good Luck!