UK Customs Charge Ridiculous!

Gorilla said:
But when ever possible use U.S.P.S. and DHL is a joke. Those clowns left a $8,000.00+ drumkit at the end of my driveway once!
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LOL!!! UPS threw over a $2200 camera over the wall once, and a vox amp another :/ and both times, people were at home to recieve the packages....they didn't call or anything, just threw the stuff over, and zipped out. Nice.

I think if the drum kit was heavy enough they would have prob thrown that over too :/
 
Not to hijack this thread anymore I'll say that the VAT on the shipping is truly a big ripoff, that's like a penalty tariff really. But on a related tangent, DHL, despite being considered pretty much the best in Germany managed the following stunt with me:

I ordered several pieces of clothing from the UK. The guys over there made two packages, since it was a bit of stuff. I got two tracking #s, both posted the same day. I was not at home when DHL arrived and my mom didn't know I was expecting two packages. When I got home, I tracked the second package, it said "delivery attempted at xx:xx", when the other package has the exact same delivery time. To make a long story short, the moron DHL driver had obviously overlooked the second package and in the following 5(!) days, nobody at DHL was able to locate it and get it shipped to my place. Instead it was returned to England. DHL said they had to start an investigation, but first Royal Mail would have to, since it was an international shipment. Also, the investigation could take 6-8 weeks. I was like "WTF, I CAN SEE IT'S SITTING IN COLOGNE, WAITING TO BE SHIPPED TO ENGLAND. SOMEBODY GO IN THERE AND FETCH IT FFS!!!". No such luck. The seller re-shipped it to my place free of charge, all the while I was holding back some articles from the other package which I was intending to ship back, but I needed the second package for comparing sizes etc. So absolute kudos to phixclothing for their patience and good customer relations. The best part: After 8 weeks I get a letter from DHL saying that they couldn't locate the package and if I had located it in the meantime, I should please tell them where it is. I was really thinking about ripping them off for the value of the articles, as a poenal charge for their stupidity...Not to mention the roughly 20 times I called their (non-free) hotline to talk with imbeciles who told me a different story about my shipment every time.

No qualms with FedEx as of yet, but I believe no shipping service is perfect. The level of incompetence at DHL in that particular case was, however, breathtaking, off the charts and certainly over 9,000

so long
Andreas aka Ace
 
Man, that's nuts. I've been at the sharp end of customs charges sometimes too and there's not always any apparent logic to their calculations. On some occasions it looks as if they have mis-read the fact that I paid for the item in $USD and just read it as £GBP and charge me according to that. And even THEN there's no consistency to it!

Bad news is the buggers have you by the short and curlies - if you want your package, you have to pay up!
 
It's a well covered subject. UK customs seem to be quite happy to let people into the country, no problem, but packages are a different story. Still, though we brits do like to bicker about it, there are plenty of other countries who rip-off their citizens even more. That doesn't make it right however!
 
I bought a Les Paul Custom back in '82 in Dallas, TX, USA. Carried it with me on the plane home with intentions of a stop-over in London and then flying on to Abu Dhabi (where I lived at the time) a couple of days later. I go thru the "green Line" at Heathrow Customs and they want to charge me VAT + Import duty to bring it into the country, even tho' I had proof (airline ticket) I was leaving 3 days later. Since I wasn't importing it and wasn't leaving it in the UK.. I told 'em to "bond" it for the 3 days. They hate that!! They have to go thru so-o-o much paperwork - and to be honest it's a PITA for the owner too - but I wasn't about to pay up. So they took their sweet time doing the paperwork and putting the guitar into the holding tank for 3 days. I picked it up on the way out... never did pay anything on it and a year later brought it back into the UK as "mine". I still have that guitar. :)
 
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I would never do this of course, but I have heard that clever people forge receipts from local retailers, which they produce at customs to demonstrate that the item was not bought overseas, but merely taken away on an overseas trip for professional reasons. Some careful "dishevelling" of the packaging material helps, as does a coffee cup stain on the user manual.

But as I said, I have never done this, and I have certainly never done it with a Pro Tools HD3 which cost AUD 8000 less in Los Angeles than it did in Sydney.
 
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