Am i right in thinking that if Royal Mail receives an item from a foreign postal service they should just be delivering it?
They have no way of checking or judging whether correct postage has been paid and shouldn't be levying a fee?
Is the fee applied by the local delivery office or elsewhere?
They have no way of checking or judging whether correct postage
How come? I imagine they probably have tbh
Yes because they totally work for free and don't worry, they will pay your customs and handling charges too.
A bit more detail on what the fee is for would help.
If your handling fee (shown separately) is £8 it's HMRC that you owe - the £8 is the Royal Mail customs handling fee for paying in advance and getting the item through customs.
See
Sent from in the EU, it's not a customs fee.
It's a fee they've applied because they think no postage has been paid. Postage has been paid in country of origin but it is a code not a traditional stamp so a no postage fee has been applied.
Question was whether they have any way of checking whether correct postage has been paid in country of origin?
If it's EU then they probably have, how much are we talking here?
...but it is a code not a traditional stamp
One would presume that RM have agreements with couriers that manifest in the understanding of particular codes so they can take their cut of the postage paid by the sender. If they can’t read the code, and thus take their cut, they aren’t going to deliver somebody else’s packet.
Post Nord (Danish national post service) says the fault lies with Royal Mail, I was just interested in how likely that was to be true (Post Nord is not highly regarded!)
I'd assumed that between national mail carriers, if the Danish post service had sent it as far as the UK then RM would deliver and vice versa.