How do you avoid custom charges?

[Villiam Hayes]

Originally Posted by Douglas R

Shipping from America via another European country does not avoid customs charges. They probably do this to economise on their shipping costs, although in the case of Axel they charge VAT in advance.

Planetaxel ship from their warehouse in the States or Canada to their warehouse in the E.U. and then forward it to the buyer thus avoiding custom charges.

[Douglas R]

Originally Posted by stuarty

Planetaxel ship from their warehouse in the States or Canada to their warehouse in the E.U. and then forward it to the buyer thus avoiding custom charges.

They don't avoid customs charges - no supplier can legally do that. The charges are worked into the total cost of the item.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by TotoroDragon

well not to argue with you,but i have been told before on many a website that royal mail ect do not take into account the cost of postage,but they do with me.

Postage & Packaging should only been taken into account when you go over the limit. It must be extremely frustrating when they lump P & P into it when the item is under £15. I can't remember anyone who has had their money refunded after they've been charged incorrectly!

1.What does HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) mean when they refer to the import of low value goods?

Imports of low value goods are any consignments, made up of goods of a negligible value, that are dispatched direct from a third country (non-EU) country to a consignee in the EU which may be admitted free of customs import duty and/or import VAT.

Currently this means that:

• consignments with an intrinsic value of £15 or less are free from both customs duty and import VAT.
• import VAT is payable when the intrinsic value of the goods is over £15.
• customs duty (and import VAT) is payable when the intrinsic value of the imported goods is over £135.

2.What is the intrinsic value?

The intrinsic value is the price paid or payable for the goods excluding postage and packing and insurance costs.

[ArnoBD]

Hi ,

Thanks very much for the tip about planetaxel.com !
I just ordered there 11 BD's ...
Two items are on "0-3 additional days" delivery, the others were marked "in stock".

Since i had to pay extra at the postman, when he delivered the "Wanted" box I ordered from Amazon.com, I only ordered a few times a single disc to avoid extra payment.
So this is my 1st major order since from oversea (~135 euro)...

I will keep you updated on how delivery goes !

Current state:
Sunday Apr 1 @ 20:28 GMT Order registered
Sunday Apr 1 @ 20:28 GMT Pending
Monday Apr 2 - 1 e-mail , 1 item dispatched
Tuesday Apr 3 - 10 e-mails. 10 items dispatched seperately

Received:
Apr 11 : 1 from the 10 (from the UK)
Apr 12 : 8 from the 10 (from NL)
Apr 13 : 1 from the 1st, Apr.2 (from GER)


Apr 13: Still waiting for 1 title, 1 from the 10.

From one received title the box is damaged.


With kind regards,

Arno

[blu_sharpy]

The 0-3 additional days discs shouldn't take long at all. I had a few that said 0-3 days and were sourced within hours so there shouldn't be a wait and you shouldn't have to pay anything extra as everything in your order gets shipped separately anyway.

[Mr. Thomsen]

Originally Posted by Douglas R

Shipping from America via another European country does not avoid customs charges. They probably do this to economise on their shipping costs, although in the case of Axel they charge VAT in advance.

In my case, yes it does. Anything imported from another EU country is not liable to custom charges. That's a fundamental part of the EU treaty.

All other EU countries have a higher limit than the Danish. Therefore, if an order from the US has entered an EU country legally because of said country's higher import limit, the Danish customs are not allowed to charge you for the goods. They may only charge for goods that have come directly to Denmark from outside the EU.

[Mr. Thomsen]

Originally Posted by Douglas R

They don't avoid customs charges - no supplier can legally do that. The charges are worked into the total cost of the item.

No, but they play the system. They basically exploit the fact that all countries in the EU have different import limits. They import the discs to a country with a high import limit, then repack them and ship them to their destination.

As the discs have been imported legally to EU and were below the importing country's import limit, the destination country is not allowed to charge customs. As I wrote above, it is a fundamental principle in the EU that goods can travel freely between the member countries without being subjected to customs inspection.

[gothic_hobbit]

It is now 2014.

Which companies are still customs friendly ?

[Indiana Jones]

Originally Posted by gothic_hobbit

It is now 2014.

Which companies are still customs friendly ?

The only two I know of that will guarantee no charges are Movietyme and DVDWorldUSA as they re-ship from inside the UK.

There are other companies out there that I have ordered from that arrived without charges (ImportCDs/Barnes&Noble) but that might have just been luck.

If you order from Amazon.com and choose Expedited Shipping you can pre-pay Import Fee's so no nasty surprise.

[TheDot]

Ah, PlanetAxel, those were the days.

[Sinthetic]

I buy from DeepDiscount and Bluraysforeveryone for my US stuff. DDDHouse, YesAsia, KimchiDVD and Amazon Japan for my Asian stuff.

Never had customs charges.

[bigeviljimmy]

how reliable are bluraysforeveryone?

[Sky_Captain]

Originally Posted by bigeviljimmy

how reliable are bluraysforeveryone?

Apart from the dire website, I have no quibbles.

[Indiana Jones]

Originally Posted by bigeviljimmy

how reliable are bluraysforeveryone?

Its a one man operation so can take some time to get titles but when they are sent I have found they normally arrive in about a week and never had any issues in all the years I have used the site.

[evilzedar]

Originally Posted by bigeviljimmy

how reliable are bluraysforeveryone?

I've used him a few times. Sometimes a bit slow to dispatch, but never any problems beyond that, and always good communication.

[KRW1]

Blurays for everyone, very reliable. He once went out of his way to find me an OOP tin of the Vengence trilogy and sold it to me at retail when he could have marked it up. Not a bad word to say.

Someone mentioned Barnes and Noble - they used to be reliable in the days when they marked everything up as 'books' but that changed about two years ago and now they're extremely unreliable - more so than most suppliers as they dispatch things separately even if you order everything at once, so if you order three discs, you might well end up with three charges if they all get stopped.

[malcy30]

Originally Posted by KRW1

Blurays for everyone, very reliable. He once went out of his way to find me an OOP tin of the Vengence trilogy and sold it to me at retail when he could have marked it up. Not a bad word to say.

Someone mentioned Barnes and Noble - they used to be reliable in the days when they marked everything up as 'books' but that changed about two years ago and now they're extremely unreliable - more so than most suppliers as they dispatch things separately even if you order everything at once, so if you order three discs, you might well end up with three charges if they all get stopped.

B&N are a nightmare now in the last Criterion half price sale as well as marking as DVD so attracting a charge they declared the full price not what you paid, so had to go through the hassle of getting a refund from Revenue & Customs as you have to pay Royal Mail then argue about a partial refund.

Agree I would still probably stick with them if they did do as you request of a single shipment so only one RM customs handling fee, but they randomly break up multi item orders into varied separate packages so can get multiple charges.

[bigeviljimmy]

Thanks for the replies, what shipping methods do you use the 8 blus posted for $28 looks good