I’m feeling completely f@&ked over.
I bought a few different sizes of shirts and shorts from fox uk with the plan of finding the right sizes and sending the others back. It turns out fox uk is based in Eindhoven NL, which is fine as I qualified for free postage. However returning the unwanted items has cost me £15 in shipping plus £10 for insurance! Plus I had to fill out a customs declaration.
I liked being a European, I didn’t vote for this!
Sorry, I had to vent.
I bought some shoes from Lake, also based in Eindhoven. They didn't fit quite right so I sent them back via ups. I bought the service on the 15th May and dropped it off at the UPS point on the 18th of May it's now the 11th of June and it's just leaving the UK, who knows when it'll get back to Lake. I then have to hope they take pity on me and refund now it's outside their 30 day window
Used/read magazines sent uk->Spain have attracted handling charges.
2nd hand On One frame off eBay, total nightmare.
Goods ordered in UK spent weeks languishing in customs.
Marmite, Heinz beans, Guinness prices at Carrefour remain the same fwiw, but that's all muck for rabid expats.
I used to buy a fair bit of stuff from the Uk for various reasons; this year I've spent at least a couple of grand elsewhere because of the hassle.
Not the Brexit I voted against? I wish. Not eligible to vote in referendi, like 100,000s of other Brits, and thanks to Brexit I can't even vote in local council elections any more.
Running a post office I get this every day - if your sending a gift always label the customs form at less than £20....(sending from. The UK or out of the EU).... If you want insurance above £20 pay for a better service but still label the customs form at £20 or less.... Don't include any invoices in the parcel obviously.
Postage insurance and customs forms are two seperate things.
If your sending goods you've sold - label everything to the correct value and ideally include an invoice and any paperwork on the outside of the parcel, accessable by customs.
My MIL lives in Spain, it's taken 6months and around £150 in charges we've had to pay to get this into her head....
if your sending a gift always label the customs form at less than £20
Does this little trick stop working in… 18 days time? For sending into the EU? I’ve started forgetting what the 1st July changes are now, as looking at the fresh problems they’re going to introduce for cross border shipping was hurting my head.
All this for blue passports!?!?!
All this for blue passports!?!?!
Not just blue passports - there's the also the enormous sense of satisfaction of having been able to **** things up just because you don't understand them. Remember those stalls at fairground where you could pay a quid to throw cricket balls at crockery. No game of chance or skill, just smashing things because you could - much more satisfying than having made the crockery in the first place.
As a small business whose sales are 40% b2c exports it's just so messy. Although I was totally against brexit I thought that with a deal selling b2c to the EU would be no different to the USA or the other countries we sell to. Wrong, it's now slower and more expensive to send our stuff 20 miles to France that it is the US! And nobody from ROW countries complained about fees, tax or duty on orders pre brexit where as our EU customers have been hit with huge fees from the shipping courier and often with duty applied that should be despite all documentation in place.
I was looking forward to IOSS but now we're being told we need to appoint an intermediary in the EU country we register in (Ireland in our case) despite the UK having a mutual assistance agreement with Ireland. The intermediary fees are several thousand pound.
now we’re being told
They were saying this would be required when I looked into it in Dec/Jan.
Red tape isn’t free. Which is fine, if the “Brexit you voted for” was one that increased red tape, because you considered there not to be enough, or the existing system to be to simple and affordable for businesses and consumers alike.
They were saying this would be required when I looked into it in Dec/Jan.
They're shouldn't be a requirement with the mutual assistance agreement in place. That's the point of it. The costs for small companies is huge. The solution, were being told is to use Amazon or eBay to sell. Great, so actively encouraging using tax avoiding corporations.
Anyway, we've now got a deal with our German stockist for them the hold stock and fulfill EU orders.
The costs for small companies is huge.
Yes. They are.
Anyway, we’ve now got a deal with our German stockist for them the hold stock and fulfill EU orders.
If you are shifting boxes, rather than supplying anything bespoke, this is absolutely the best option, sadly. Outposts holding stock somewhere in the EU is the (inefficient) future for many UK businesses.
I thought that with a deal selling b2c to the EU would be no different to the USA or the other countries we sell to. Wrong
Yup.
This is the "we were alright before we joined" argument, one of many we warned about and got shouted down as project fear. Aside from the fact were weren't alright and the opening gambit is a lie (we were the "sick man of Europe") the point everyone ignored was that we were never going to magically go back to 'before.' Rather, a buttload of agreements, arrangements and rights negotiated over 40 years were about to disappear overnight. With nothing to replace them and no additional infrastructure to cope with the change.
I'm genuinely sorry for people who are struggling (especially if they voted against it) and take little pleasure from "I told you so" but, well, we did I'm afraid.
