Buying from the US - How to speed up the delivery & save money

[DrRobin]

Hi,

I recently bought a fan cooling kit from Ed @ Deep Space Products, he had them in stock so shipped it the same day on the 10th.  I asked him to write on the package the following:

'TO BE CLEARED IN CUSTOMS BY IMPORTER'

in large print.

What this means is that I will pay any import duty and VAT directly to HM Customs and Excise and you save the shipping agents fee for dealing with customs on your behalf.

If the sender uses their national mailing service then the UK handler is Royal Mail and they slap on a fee of up to £13 for paying your import duty, which they then pass on to you.  RM says it is quicker, but my experience in the past is that they pay the duty and then several days later you receive a card through the post to say there is a fee to pay.  Usually the whole process takes a week from when the goods arrive in the UK.

If you put 'To be cleared....' on the package HM Customs contact you directly to pay the import duty and VAT, but they don't add a handling fee and in my case sent on the goods before they billed me.  No doubt the tax and VAT bill will arrive in the next couple of days, but I received my goods in 6 days from the US and saved a few quid.

It probably isn't easy to do it this way if it is by Fedex or one of the other carriers but saving £13 on a small value order is a big saving.

Robin

[esxste]

I bought something from the US recently and they posted through USPS. This end, Royal Mail wanted £20 to release it :\

[crashtestdummy]

Just go through UPS who deliver direct and cut out parcelfarce.someone on here said you can refuse to pay the fee anyway as they aren't legal allowed to withhold your goods

[Reeny]

Agena were out of stock when I wanted to buy the Explore Scientific 82 degree - so I used Hands-On-Optics instead.

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/handsonopticstelescopesandmore/

They use a pre-paid clearance scheme - so no extra charges.

It still took around 10 days to arrive,

but was only £90 delivered = £62.50p eyepiece / £13 delivery / £14 tax

[Naemeth]

Thanks for the tip .

[DrRobin]

The last time I bought something, the fee was just over twenty quid, I think RMs cut of that was £13 and about £8 import duty and VAT.

If you go through UPS or Fedex, they still pay the duty and VAT on your behalf and then add their handling fee to the amount you have to pay, so you still don't avoid it.

Robin

[ronin]

I used FedEx to get stuff, they take care of the customs and duty and bill you and I had the stuff in less then 2 days.

Best was ordered at 17:15 on a Monday from Minissota, I had the bits (optical) at 10:30 on the Wednesday.

Done this 3 or 4  times with them and very quick and no problems.

They actually seem to have an idea what thay are doing, and the processing is part of the shipping payment so no little surprises when it gets to these shores.

[DrRobin]

That's a good idea Reeny, I hadn't heard of pre-paid import tax & VAT before, but it would certainly speed up the process.

Robin

[DrRobin]

Ronin, I buy stuff from the US for work, I often ring on the evening to confirm and pay for the order, say a Wed and the goods are always here Friday morning.  But you do pay for this in the shipping fee.

Robin

[Tinker1947]

Maybe around 2004'Ish i ordered some tools from a company in Florida, phoned the order over on a Friday received the goods on the Monday this happened with 3 different order's spread over a year or more....i did ask for Fedex to do the delivery...no fees paid on delivery received a Custom demand on one of them.....