I just got a letter from Parcel Force asking for £11.75 to deliver my copy of the Beginner Box - £3.75 VAT + £8 'Clearance Fee'.
Anyone else affected or did I get unlucky with Customs?
Raging Swan Press
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I just got a letter from Parcel Force asking for £11.75 to deliver my copy of the Beginner Box - £3.75 VAT + £8 'Clearance Fee'.
Anyone else affected or did I get unlucky with Customs?
You did better than me. I got hit for £14.75! I was delighted. It's the £8 fee for telling me about the £6 of VAT that's irritating.
Books are VAT exempt, so book only Paizo orders are fine on the way through customs. But, if a shipment contains any games or other 'non book' materials then you become liable for VAT on the value of the whole package.
Books are VAT exempt, so book only Paizo orders are fine on the way through customs. But, if a shipment contains any games or other 'non book' materials then you become liable for VAT on the value of the whole package.
Yeah this is the first time it's happened so I've learned the hard way not to buy any non-books from paizo now.
It's not so much the VAT that's galling, it's the fact that parcel force can hold you to ransom with a fine that you can't contest.
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I live in Germany, and I was expecting customs to give me a call to fetch my BeginnerBox with them, paying extra for it.
That's what usually happens, when the writing on the package says it contains something other than books. But this time, I got it without any hazzle.
I once had to pay an extra 3.78€ because of a pack of dice in a package. When I asked the custom-officer how that amount came to be he said he didn't know o_0
Strange world, that customs world...
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I live in Germany, and I was expecting customs to give me a call to fetch my BeginnerBox with them, paying extra for it.
That's what usually happens, when the writing on the package says it contains something other than books. But this time, I got it without any hazzle.
I once had to pay an extra 3.78€ because of a pack of dice in a package. When I asked the custom-officer how that amount came to be he said he didn't know o_0
Strange world, that customs world...
Preach on! Dealing with customs officers over here usually requires a bottle of vodka for the gentleman and a box of chocolates for the lady (or the gentleman's wife)...
Waiting for my package here in Denmark as well.... this close to Christmas everything seems to be hit by VAT :-/
For what it's worth, I received my copy of the Beginner Box a little over a week ago (I live in Aalborg) and it went through customs without that annoying "We Have a Package You Need to Pay For" letter.
So there is one advantage of the high price of postage to Australia - no customs duty or add GST (VAT equivalent) on orders under $1000.
I ordered 2 boxes and they came separately!
2 customs fees to pay???
Why not send them in the same box???
Chief Technical Officer
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I ordered 2 boxes and they came separately!
2 customs fees to pay???
Why not send them in the same box???
Shipments are optimized for the lowest total shipping costs; if we shipped them separately, it's because the total shipping cost would have been higher if we had shipped them in one package.
We can't factor customs fees into that for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that we don't actually have any information on customs regulations from other countries.
(And "always shipping them together" is not the best answer, because we do know that some countries don't apply customs fees on some categories of goods until some particular value threshold is passed, and in those cases, folks might get tagged with a customs fee if things are combined where they would have no fees if they were separated.)