Royal Mail

[Robocourier]

A quick question to UK members.

When importing items from the US that incur customs charges, what day do you get the letter from Royal Mail/Parcelforce demanding payment??

Maybe pure coincidence but mine always turn up on a Friday.

And the point is?

Well, apart from having recently increased their handling charge from £8.00 to £13.50, perhaps the item you want is urgent and you need to have it for the weekend.

But wait, I'm in luck!! They can offer a delivery on a Saturday, I won't have to wait a further three/four days to get it delivered.

Saturday delivery, however, is a further £12 and they make it sound as though they are doing you a favour.

Of course, if the payment letter turned up on any day other than a Friday this attempt to extract more money from the customer would be pointless.

Not that I'm cynical. Or bitter that I won't get my cell cleaner from Arby until next week. Just tight.

[Chris]

Robocourier - I have had my letters on various days, but definately not on a Friday. Must be just luck how things have turned out.

[drcrippen324]

alot of mine turn up on a friday but do recive the letter on other days too

[daverob]

I've had them on different days as well.

The big question I have for Royal Mail/Parcelfarce is that the customs charge letters always have second class postage on them. So you often have to wait a few days between when the tracking number shows up as having cleared customs and being able to pay the charges, even when the sender has paid extra for a priority delivery.

Surely if they're going to be charging us 13 quid for recieving this letter, they should be able to justify the extra 10p for a first class stamp.

Personally I've started using DHL whenever possible for the imports that I can't get the value marked down on the customs declaration (so I know they are going to get clobbered with customs charges). If you are shipping to an individual at a private address rather than a company, then the DHL clearance fee can be as low as £1.25. So you can afford to pay around $20 extra in shipping fees and still be ahead. You'll also get your shipment a lot faster than parcelfarce, and it won't be delayed until you pay the customs bill, as the invoice is usually sent out about a month or so after you've received your items.

The only downside is you need to check the bills they send you as they can be quite creative in charging duties and taxes on the shipping fees (ie double charging when the shipping fees are included on the customs invoice, or calculating it on inflated book rates rather than the actual shipping cost they charged to the sender), but to their credit every time they've tried to pull a fast one on me and I've called them on it, they've apologised and sent a corrected bill a couple of days later.

[Robocourier]

...Personally I've started using DHL whenever possible for the imports that I can't get the value marked down on the customs declaration (so I know they are going to get clobbered with customs charges). If you are shipping to an individual at a private address rather than a company, then the DHL clearance fee can be as low as £1.25. So you can afford to pay around $20 extra in shipping fees and still be ahead. You'll also get your shipment a lot faster than parcelfarce, and it won't be delayed until you pay the customs bill, as the invoice is usually sent out about a month or so after you've received your items.

Don't you need some kind of account with them?? I always thought all companies want the payment before they will release the goods?

[daverob]

Don't you need some kind of account with them?? I always thought all companies want the payment before they will release the goods?

Most of the other big shipping companies work this way as well, ie DHL, FedEx etc. You get your parcel and think it's made it through without customs charges, then a month or so later they clobber you with a bill.

The only downsides to this is that some shippers (especially those ones with accounts) don't like this deliver first, send invoice for duty/vat later approach, as if the invoice is not paid then the shipping company try to recover the costs from the sender.

Unlike the others, DHL have decided that the £10+ clearance charges that the other companies charge is pricing them out of the personal small order import market, and seeing as this area is growing fast due to internet shopping, they've reduced the charge to £1.25 or 2% of the shipment value (whichever is greater) for private individuals on deliveries to a residential address.