Brakes ended up being an additional £60.

£7 duty
£40 VAT
£12 admin fee

I think the brakes were £215 originally.

could you not have bought them as separate items?

Maybe but I needed a set so just ordered as such.

My forks arrived from starbike via DHL/parcelforce. No duty paid.

dropper arrived via UPS no duty but did pay VAT when purchasing.

Maybe but I needed a set so just ordered as such.

As did I when I got my G2 ultimates from R2-bike, but bought them separately as I worked out (with the help of a few forum folks) I’d have a better chance of slipping through the net so to speak. Worked out about tenner more than buying a pair before added fees, but they got through no issue at all as both were under £135, rather than a collective £260.

My forks arrived from starbike via DHL/parcelforce. No duty paid.

This is encouraging since I have forks coming via the same couriers.

I think it’s just luck of the draw at the moment though!

It seems pretty likely still that a big part of it is that packages aren’t being routinely checked so a lot of stuff is still passing through. “Taking back control”. I get quite a lot of taxable/dutiable stuff from China and I’m pretty sure that more is coming through unchecked than before brexit.

Incidentally, I had a package delivered by DHL early in the year, and they sent me a bill afterwards for VAT and handling, and that “we’ve paid your tax so you have to pay us” I emailed them back and asked them if I was legally obliged to pay, since I had no contract or agreement with DHL and had basically been billed after the fact for a service I’d never agreed t. That was the last I heard.

Also,

bruneep
Full Member

What a painfully slow antiquated system that is in desperate need of modernisation.

They had your money for an extra 3 weeks, multiply that across every shipment they screw around with and it adds up. Then add in all the smaller payments where people just get pissed off chasing them around. And the customer is paying for the handling. I reckon it’s working exactly as intended.

Not looking promising….‘ revised customs charges raised’

16/4/2021 10:40 International Hub Released from customs
16/4/2021 10:17 International Hub Revised Customs charges raised
16/4/2021 10:11 International Hub Customs charges raised
15/4/2021 19:22 International Hub Awaiting Customs clearance

That was the last I heard.

All they can really do is to stop delivering to you, and hold any more parcels for you hostage.

so, guess the Border Force Gods were not smiling on me. Just had to stump up 20% VAT & 4% import duty.

Not the end of the world as I was only buying from Europe because there was availability (Forks & Brakes). Had I been able to source them in the UK I probably would have & paid the VAT etc anyway.

Mildly frustrating it’s seemingly random!

Ordered Di2 shifters (with calipers) from Alltricks in France on the 5th of May, selected DPD as courier . Arrived in the UK and cleared customs within 3 days, then landed with Parcelfarce. Supposed to receive a letter detailing duties, VAT and fee. Eventually tweeted them this morning (13/5) to get the reference number to pay the duties (who knows when their letter will arrive?!

According to their breakdown I got hit with duties @ 14% (I’m pretty sure according to trade tariff 871494 it should be 4% for brake levers and calipers as 14% is for complete bikes unless someone can enlighten me). Paid duties, Vat and their £12 fee online, never got an email confirmation. Fingers crossed parcel will turn up.

Also ordered parts from Bike-discount.de via DHL, should land in the UK over the weekend, will update how that one goes.

Parcel force seem to be really slow with the letters – last one I had on day 19 or so, only a day before the item was supposed to be returned to the sender. I’ve swapped carrier where I can. Luckily I know the parcelforce delivery guy and he got me the paperwork required to pick up the item.

I do have some eewings coming from the US , which will be parcel force,so that will be interesting.

I have a bike that I need to ride to the bank on . Therefore the shop needed to buy it for me. I don’t like riding on the road so it needed to be a mountain bike.
If I needed to buy some new forks for it and I got stung for vat can I claim it back as it’s for shop use?

Hi,
I’m thinking of buying an obscenely expensive pair of wheels from Italy to try to make up for my lack of fitness and talent, and was hoping to garner some recent opinion on the likelihood of getting stung for import duty and VAT.

They’re priced sans EU VAT, so ticket price is relatively “cheap”, but if I end up paying £230 VAT etc then it all starts to look a it unjustifiable.

What’s y’all’s recent experiences of buying from the EU?
Mostly having to pay VAT etc or not so much?

Also, anyone got any good or bad experience buying from gambacicli.com?

Grazie

sorry @thegenerallist cant help you with your question, but for others, I ordered from Mantel who have a max order limit including postage of £135, ordered some tyres which came to £80ish on Saturday and arrived Wednesday with no issues.

As others have said before, if you’re not prepared to pay import fees, don’t buy from the EU. Treat anything over £135 as being the price plus circa 25% and if you don’t have to pay the fees it’s a bonus. But generally best to work on just expecting to pay them on anything over £135.

Just about to pay £348 import bill for a groupset via UPS due next week from Germany, still cheaper than UK and was available.

If they are unavailable in the UK then it’s prob worth the Dutta and vat.

I just bought a tune hub – last one available anywhere for £160 (£400rrp) duty was £40 with fees etc. Sooo still 1/2 price…..

Also remember you’ll pay vat on the total price including postage costs…..

Right, a new challenge.

I want to send my fork to Germany, have some knackered bits of it replaced, then sent back to me. Is there a way of doing this without getting rinsed for the VAT of full value of the fork each way, rather just pay the VAT on the new bits on return?

Or am I better off just learning how to rebuild forks?

I’ve sent a Bulova Accutron watch to the US for repair and avoided duty by using words similar to below on the customs declaration. Worked fine on the way to the US, unfortunately the repairer didn’t bother on the way back so I got hit for the duty (which he then refunded, he’d sent back the wrong watch too but that’s a different story)

• Description: Wristwatch for repair
• Return within three months
• £0.00 No commercial value

Does putting zero commercial value not ruin any insurance I might take out for its journey though?

@tom Howard

We use a carnet for things like that, just imported a 130k microscope for 2 months using it.

Sorry Tom, not answering your question, but thought I ought to note the outcome of my purchase since its only polite to add to the data ( that’s the plural of antidote (sic) isn’t it):-)

Didn’t pay and VAT or duty on the wheels from Italy.

New SRAM eagle XO cassette.

Customs Duty = £8.39

Import Vat = £47.01

Clearance fee = £12

Optional Farcelforce  Saturday Deliver fee of £12 ???

Is there a way of doing this

Yes there is. But the likelihood of it going wrong in at least one direction, and wasting hours of your life, is very high. It would be worth asking if they’ll pay someone in the UK to fix it.

Yes there is. But the likelihood of it going wrong in at least one direction, and wasting hours of your life, is very high. It would be worth asking if they’ll pay someone in the UK to fix it.

Further research has revealed this to be true. I’m gonna give it a go myself. (It’s not on them to sort it, its out of warranty)

Imagine being a small UK brand trying to look after your customers across our new self imposed barriers… 😶

My parcel has been held up in customs for almost a week now with the tag “awaiting clearance information needed from addressee” after a couple of calls got to someone who gave me a contact email, within 20 mins of sending that someone called me.

The reason it was held was the description of the goods were in German and they didn’t know what was inside. 🤦‍♂️ Google translate isn’t obviously a tool they can use in Parcelforce worldwide. Now I have to wait 7 days for the fee letter to arrive before I can pay what I’m due.

viva brexit

Just putting in my two penneth…

Bought a Joe Blow Booster pump back in November from BikeInn(.co.uk) for about EUR130 and £20 cheaper than the UK.

In May it went wrong, under warranty.

Oh my word, the returns process was painful.

If you have to return stuff then prepare for hassle, couriers, paperwork and cost.

Then, if it’s exchanged, prepare to pay the VAT, duty and fees again.

Worth considering this grief before buying something from the EU.

Overall, I’ve sort of given up on Europe unless it’s the only stock available and / or I’m not worried about writing it off if it goes wrong.