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US Purchases - Charges

DRD

DRD

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Oct 26, 2014
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I am going to treat my games to some parts. I will buy what I can in the UK, but some will unfortunately need to come from the US.

Are there any tips please to avoid unnecessarily incurring VAT, postage, duties etc

Thank you
 
Not really mate, it's a lottery. Gone are the days you could ask the seller to mark the goods up for a lesser value. They're all squeaky clean.

I've had a playfield from cpr sting me about £80 in tax then a backglass from them sloped under the radar.

Poor old RonSplooter got raped by the tax man when his FG playfield arrived!!
 
Yep, your best bet is if you have a friend in the US, get it all sent to them. Then you pay your mate the actual costs for them to send you some 'books' or whatever.
 
Yeah total lottery as the other guys said, I paid £12 on a very small box of cliffy protectors for my JM recently (£4 import fee, £8 royal mail 'handling' fee which I assume means they slapped a sticker on it and handled it) which was from the US. On the other hand we had a massive box of xmas presents come all the way from New Zealand which was 10x as big and probably 5x as heavy and only paid £22 for it and it was valued at £100 as opposed to something like $20 which the box of protectors cost me. Seems to be there is very little consistency.
 
Friends/relatives are the best solution. Get it sent to them and then they post it to you, or bring it back when they next visit, etc.

I've only ordered once from the US. It was for some repro parts and came to about £50. I got stung with 20% VAT and £9 Post Office handling fee, so just short of £70 altogether. Needless to say I won't be doing that again...
 
There is no way i would be paying that £8 fee from Royal Fail. You should claim it back as you didn't agree to it. @Wizcat did this.

As for marking them down i think Computer Development Samples works.
 
It was over 18 months ago, so I may have missed the boat on getting my nine quid back. Oh well, mark it up to experience. I'm never ordering and shipping direct from the US again. Anything small can come back in someone's bag (I work for a US company so know people going back and forth) and if I ever did want something big and expensive like a repro playfield I'd get a flight there and bring it back myself. No cheaper overall but at least I'd get a trip to the US out of it!
 
Arv said:
There is no way i would be paying that £8 fee from Royal Fail. You should claim it back as you didn't agree to it. @Wizcat did this.

As for marking them down i think Computer Development Samples works.
Click to expand...

Wish I could but it was like a ransom, they wouldent give me it until I paid up as I was at work when they tried to deliver. I just wanted the parts, £8 wasn't a huge concern to me. Like I say though total lottery. I order other items from the US, mainly comics, all the time and there is never any charge for them as they don't weight enough or are large enough to warrant one. I have to give Mr Cliffy some respect, he put them in the smallest box he could have with packing peanuts and got all the parts in so I don't know what else could be done really unless you go down the route @Nedreud suggested and do the friends/relatives thing.
 
The RM 8 quid ransom is the kick in the wedding tackle but sometimes you just have to get stuff from across the globe
 
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Thanks for the advice. It sounds like phone a friend. And if you have no US friends, only buy little items.

Which makes it a bit tough if you want a playfield !
 
Ive had a few things shipped in via Dublin then came straight up to the North with no handling or duty etc added.

If i put my address as Ireland rather than Northern Ireland, it seems it goes to Southern Ireland who realise Belfast is in Northern Ireland and send/divert it up, gets to Belfast from Dubliun so not international (thats my theory anyhow)

Granted its probably not the best scheme for most on here as most are not living on the emerald isle but thought I would share anyhow :cool:
 
I forget the actual figures but had something like $25 of goods sent which customs read as $2500 and wanted to charge me £400 for the privilege of collecting from the post office! How I laughed!!
 
Biggest downside with underdeclaring the value is if something gets damaged in transit. Insurance will only cough up the declared value. "Expensive backglass you say? Sorry Sir, the paperwork says £25"

Sent from my KFSOWI using Tapatalk
 
my local parcel force driver who i know well, say`s around 50% of overseas parcels are looked at ,so it`s pot luck if you get caught out, i`ve found that most sellers on ebay in the states seem willing to declare at $18 which is the u.k. limit,
 
I've used shipito for recent orders, providing the U.S. seller doesn't put the value on the box it can be useful and some of the shipping options are cheap too. E.g. Got a few B/W LED OCD boards recently and they were sent domestic US mail to some warehouse in Nevada, after which I declared the value to the import police very truthfully and honestly before Shipito posted them over to me via the various mailing options - total service costs about £1 per item.

Also note Comet Pinball are very nice and helpful in this context - products' very good too.
 
An old trick I used to use when importing stuff from China, ask the supplier to mark it as "free sample - no value". If you're on good terms with the sender they will do it. No more import tax!
 
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