Custom charges how bloody much

nutbox

Cool ,tried ringing the number on the letter but they said I have to ring customs direct and there not open .

Philly_Q

They won't deliver unless you pay the charge, so yes pay it then write to HMRC.

Just as an irrelevant aside, even if no VAT was due (which isn't the case here) you can't get the £8 admin fee back, because that's a Royal Mail or Parcelforce fee not a Customs charge.  I've had that a few times on Amazon packages where they've wrongly charged me VAT, I still reclaimed the VAT from HMRC but a £10 Blu-ray or CD ended up costing me £18.  I suppose I could've taken it up with Royal Mail but it's much easier to get a refund from HMRC than from Royal Mail!

Skipped

If anybody has successfully imported a 50's (or even 60's) guitar on customs tariff 9705 0000 (Collectors items), and has paid only 5% Vat and Zero duty ......please share the details with the forum.

http://www.uklpf.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=2757&start=25

nutbox

I contacted customs ,they said that the parcel had been valued at $1000cad so that's why it so expensive. They said I had to pay the bill and then claim it back. Do people think I got a good chance in getting the money back,I still got my paypal invoice for the purchase ,but it doesn't specificlly say I purchased a randall mts module but it does mention that the money was for a module in the message box. What would people do in my boots. A) send it back pay bill and claim back? Cheers dazz

Paul_C

I once bought a bass from Ishibashi (well, one of a number of basses ) and Customs priced their charge wrongly, so that the duty was almost as much as the bass.

I phoned them to ask about this and was told I could either pay it and claim it back or tell the van driver that I was refusing the delivery because of the excessive charge and it would go back to the office in Coventry where they'd sort it out.

After numerous conversations as to its progress and four or five assertions that despite the tracking saying it was going back to Japan that wouldn't happen because "a stop has been placed on it", it went back to Japan.

When I phoned yet again to see what was going on, I was asked what I wanted them to do - I replied "get my (insert fairly polite expletive here as I didn't want to upset someone and not get my bass) bass back from Japan!" which, to be fair, they did.

Eventually I was charged the correct amount of duty and they delivered the (much travelled) bass.