Customs Charge
I just got a note through my door from the post office saying they cannot give me my items because it has a customs charge for £13.53.
Needless to say I am not very happy at all. I'm not particularly willing to pay £13.53 customs charges for items I've already paid for (plus shipping). I'm taking this is because they had to search the box because it wasn't labeled properly?
Would it be possible to get £13.53 of my money back? If not I am simply thinking of getting them to send it back to you and asking for a full refund of my money, as my order said nothing about recieving a customs charge. The note says I have a week to pick up my item or they'll automatically send it back, so a reply as soon as possible would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
Order Number: 5605162400
Order Date: August 14, 2007
Needless to say I am not very happy at all. I'm not particularly willing to pay £13.53 customs charges for items I've already paid for (plus shipping). I'm taking this is because they had to search the box because it wasn't labeled properly?
Would it be possible to get £13.53 of my money back? If not I am simply thinking of getting them to send it back to you and asking for a full refund of my money, as my order said nothing about recieving a customs charge. The note says I have a week to pick up my item or they'll automatically send it back, so a reply as soon as possible would be much appreciated.
Thanks.
Order Number: 5605162400
Order Date: August 14, 2007
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Comments
I think it work the same in the UK as it do here in denmark.
If you buy anything from outside the EU, you have to pay taxes on it. In denmark its 25% tax. Most times you get lucky and noone notice your package, but if they hit it on a routine check, they will bill you for the taxes, and possibly a checking fee (here in denmark, its almost 10$ fee for that, i have had a DVD where i paid more in taxes and fees than for the game itself, ridiculous, but its the rules).
A few companies are VERY hard hit by this, i gave up buying from Amazon.co.uk for example since 10 packages in a row got caught, possibly due to the huge AMAZON logo on the box tipping them off
But were you to follow the law (here at least, i think the same goes for all of EU), you should actually contact your tax company/whoever you pay sales tax to, and pay them what they are due each time you buy something over the internet slip through customs without being charged.
If there is going to be no refund of £13.53/customs charge every package, I don't think I'll be ordering from Telltale's store again.
It was the three Bone comics and a shirt. The total, including shipping, was $63.01.
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_001454&propertyType=document
But ill highlight a few items about it:
If you purchase goods through the Internet you should be aware that customs duty and VAT will be payable, as follows:
Customs duty - if the amount of duty is £7 and over.
Import VAT - if the value of the goods is £18 and over.
According to the table at http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_ShowContent&id=HMCE_PROD_009989&propertyType=document the shirt should have a 12% duty rate fee, and the 17.5% VAT fee, and books should either be 17.5% or free, both options are listed.
I got no clue on the rules on shipping, if there is a charge on the shipping cost too, but without that, youre already looking at around 12$ VAT for the items alone. Then come the possible cost from the post office. I quote again from the page i linked earlier:
The Post Office may charge you for clearing your package through customs. They handle packages for customs examination and, if required, open and re-pack them. The Post Office will also store packages if customs need to make enquiries; for example, when the contents have not been declared properly by the sender. The Post Office fees are collected at the same time as customs charges but are completely separate and customs cannot reply to queries about them.
I cant see a set fee on that part, that might vary from area to area, but it should say on your customs charge paper how much are VAT and how much are an extra charge. If not, ask at the post office when you get your item.
And next time, hope that the customs dont find your package, if you shop a lot from the net, like i do, you will most likely end up saving more from the occasional charge and VAT from the few items they do find, than buying the items in a UK store and paying 17.5% VAT on every item.
And as extra info, Jersey and Guernsey are outside EU regulations, and thus are shops from there (like play.com that i buy from a lot), also in the risk group of getting extra cost at the customs office. You should always bear that in mind when shopping over the net. If an item are only a few % cheaper from buying from non-EU countries, its not always worth the risk.
If being charged £13.53 customs for my items is normal, it is seriously the last time I ever order from Telltale's store, like I said earlier.
We've had very few complaints about customs fees (in fact, I can't remember any until this week), which makes me think that it hasn't been an issue for most of our customers. I don't know if that means that the packages usually "slip through" or what, but I'm sorry for the surprise this time.
I sure hope this doesn't happen for my other order.
I collected the package from the post office today, but I have realised it is not the post office nor customs fault, but I think it is Digital River's. I believe they have incorrectly filled out the customs form on the package, thus causing customs to charge me for Digital River's mistake.
I will be e-mailing and sending a letter to Digital River to ask for my money back which I had to pay because of them. I just thought I'd let you know what I'm doing. If this is not successful, I will come back to you for recompense.
Thanks for helping me in the situation as much as you could, Emily.
I apologise in advance for the rather large file attachment, I just wanted to make sure it was saved in the highest quality possibile.
Alright. A private image server online would obviously be preferable if possible, since it has my contact details on it and stuff.
The parcel had a customs form attached to it that declared the goods as having a value of around $47. Now interestingly enough, the person that filled out the customs form has actually filled it in incorrectly. The value of the goods was declared as including the shipping charge. This is not the case, since the goods value has no bearing on how much it cost to ship them, which should reduce the declared amount by just under $10.
Regardless of this, due to the way Digital River fill out the customs forms, almost any order to the UK will be liable for VAT on arrival. Items with a value less than £18 (about $35) should be free of VAT, anything greater than that amount will be liable for 17.5% VAT in the UK and Europe. There is an exemption to this rule, and that is if a box on the customs form labelled "Gift" is ticked. This allows for the tax allowance to be raised to £36 (about $71) before VAT is applicable.
The reason that Guybrush and myself have had to pay very high customs duties, is partially due to the fact tax was not paid before the goods were shipped. The customs form placed on my parcel detailed a breakdown of what charges were applicable. There was a VAT charge of £4.21, plus an additional £8 charge by the Post Office for paying the duties on my behalf.
So while Digital River keeps including the shipping costs in the declared value of the goods, the majority of buyers in the UK and Europe will be incuring various import duties. If Digital River won't change that policy (which I doubt they will), it might be worth placing a warning on your stores pages that European buyers will have to expect having to pay VAT plus import duties on anything they buy from you.
I know you probably can't refund me the import duties I've been charged, although it would be lovely if you could, but I'd be happier buying from you again if you could warn other buyers in the future of the costs they are likely to incur.
Thanks for your time guys,
Pete
If possible, please send me an email at emily -at- telltalegames.com with photos of the customs forms so I can see how they have been filled out. The more concrete info we have about these forms being filled out incorrectly (or "correctly" but stupidly), the more chance there is that we can do something about it.
Also please check your PMs.
I don't have my DR declarations form anymore (since the dvd worked fine I threw the form away;-) but did they not specify 'Package value' and 'Shipment cost' seperately?
UK custom regulations are here for those interested: http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageTravel_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000014&propertyType=document#P106_9098
Well, today I went to the Post Office (ITALY) and the guy behind the door showed me the same customs. But...too late. I gave him the money, unfortunately...:mad:
34,93$!!! Crazy thing!!!:eek:
Emily...put my name on the "accidents list".
You didn't pay $35 pure tax I hope? If so, what ever did you order ?? With VAT at 20% standard EC you'd have to have a total value of US$35 x 5 = $175 ? That's a LOT of dvd's
Sure, boss.
this is really zany.
I live in Italy, I've ordered the EXACT same things Mystinsun ordered: Season One DVD-ROM (free, because we've already bought the Season on-line), Season One Soundtrack and Season One Case-File. Well, I didn't pay anything, I just received the package!
This is turning into a russian roulette... :eek:
...or maybe Bosco was right and THERE IS an international conspiracy, after all.
Only 12 quid!? I ordered the same items and got hit for £16.61...:mad:
Mine was put down as $48 though...
the fact that the shipping was included and forced up the amount I had to pay was really infuriating, and the fact that £8 goes to royal mail is quite annoying too.
You really need to get Digital River sorted, they are shockingly bad, i've never had any physical item off telltale that i've been happy with - My bone games came with cracked dvd cases, the first sam and max sketchbook took well over a month to get shipped to me, the season one disk wasn't in the centre of the case and has scratches on it, and now i get hit with customs charges
Its a good thing Telltale uses digital distribution for games otherwise I'd probably just give up on them (but then what would I do for S&M goodness...)
Working on it...
Did you email in about the damaged merchandise? If something is damaged when it reaches you, we'll send you a replacement, you just have to ask.
However, I did contact royal mail, and they say that if a charge is successfully contested against customs, they'll refund their charge.
Hopefully such a thing will be possible, otherwise we just lost the #1 reason to order from America.
I have been trying to get info from our ecommerce provider about what they can do in the case of a customs form being filled out incorrectly, but so far they have not come back to me with any answers.
I'll be looking into that when my order arrives (Hopefully tomorrow). If I find anything out i'll be sure to mention.
What you have here is different, it sounds like DR has written down the commercial re-sale value of the season1-dvd. That value isn't wrong perse, you just paid it in two parts (one to download it and second the shipping costs). Most customers will see the transactional-value for the dvd as $0, but it can be said you paid $34,95 for it months ago (making the downloads an early product preview).
Proofing that the disk is only worth $0 while it's in the the Telltale shop for $34,95 is going to be hard. Don't think the 'bonus disk only' excuse is going to work. It's just bad luck that customs decided to inspect/intercept your package. Usually you're lucky, sometimes not
That's the big advantage of electronical delivery, no silly taxes or at least not many.
Actually we do charge VAT for digital downloads, which is why it's odd to me that charging VAT for physical merchandise is not something that also happens in our store. It's not like digital downloads have to go through customs. I'm working with DR to see if we could add VAT calculation at checkout and avoid some of these issues.
The $34.95 is not being listed as the price for the DVD (at least, I haven't seen it happen yet) -- the invoice says $0 and that's what DR is listing for the DVD. Since VAT was already charged on the $34.95 downloads, people shouldn't have to pay it again when the (free) DVD enters the country. We were told that if the DVD is sent by itself, a small amount is written on the customs form to cover materials, and that's it. So far no one who bought just the DVD has had any problems, so it seems the issue is only occuring once you've got additional items in the shipment that drive up the price. If we could get them to stop listing the shipping price as part of the value, that might stop some of these packages from being flagged by customs.
(I'd be more specific, but I'm at uni and the parcel's at home, for now)
FYI I'm out of the office for about a week, but when I get back I will be working with DR to try to get refunds for people hit by unnecessary customs charges.
Yeah the Post Office charges you £9.99 just on a Customs Clearance fee. I know how you feel.