Authenticity is Everything
David Gilmour - Luck and Strange Studio/ Live: Signed Bookplate Edition (Hardback)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Findbooks on
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I presume you are in the US importing from the UK.
Tariffs are not payable on books so declare it as merchandise and describe it as a book - manufactured in the UK.
Although books are tariff-free they are not sales-tax free in most of the USA and so FedEx are likely billing you for that element. They then remit the local state sales tax to the exchequer in your State.
Declaring your parcel as a gift is fraudulent and likely to get you into bother.
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Thank you,
Declaring it as merchandise then. It seems like they give it the tariff code and the one they are using is correct for books.
I am holding off on shipping it since they said to check back in 2 weeks to see if Royal Mail shipping is available.
I am not sure if anyone is aware, but unfortunately UPS, FedEx and possibly DHL have been charging separate fees for dealing with customs regardless of whether the item is a book or not. One person in one of the book groups I’m a part of was mistakenly charged $830 on a $3500 book. They are appealing. Another person was charged $30 in brokerage fees from FedEx for a book shipped from Canada. So far I have only been charged $2 from a Vinyl shipped with UPS.
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Actually, Royal Mail is now shipping merchandise again (has been for a few weeks) and they are correctly charging £0 for books - there is a £0.50 handling charge. You have to order the shipping online, though (Click and Drop, e.g.) - taking it to the post office counter does not work because the staff seem genuinely to have not got much of a clue about........anything, (if we're honest).
Brokerage fees are a nuisance - to my knowledge they are most likely to occur when the courier concerned does not have a local outlet near the destination and the delivery is contracted out to a third-party. These gangsters seem to think they can add on all sorts of "additional costs" to the transaction. I use UPS regularly and there are rarely any additional costs to the recipient apart from the local sales tax.
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Correct, they are shipping to the U.S., but forwardvia is not offering them as a shipping option.
And yeah, it seems that brokerage fees are mostly through 3rd party. Royal Mail transfers over to USPS directly so it avoids that.
Conservation Tree Press a small limited press based in Canada had a good article about it.
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I had some books and cds, roughly valued at £100, I had shipped DHL. They charged me $20+ in tariff fees i believe it was. These tariffs are a joke.
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CD's have been classified by US customs as "informational" and therefore should not be subject to Tariff.
That is my understanding anyway. You should challenge the charge if it is being described as Tariff payment. My guess is that the charge is for your local State sales tax.
The reason for the interruption to normal postal services to the USA from Europe and beyond is that Tariffs must be paid before dispatch.
Neither the US Customs Dept nor the USPS have any systems in place to collect Tariffs after they arrive in the USA and neither do private couriers. The tariff has to be paid before the item is sent.
So you should contest any claim by any carrier for payment for "Tariffs".
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Unfortunately, while it’s related to tariffs it’s not a tarrif, but a direct consequence of tariffs. From my understanding since they removed the de minus threshold anything of value big or small coming into the country now goes through a more formal custom processing. Because of this, UPS, FedEx, etc. are now charging additional processing fees even if an item is not subject to tariffs because of the extra work they have to go through to get the item through customs.
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I urge people to read the explanation at the link posted above for Conversation Tree Press.
No doubt many of the charges people are seeing (and complaining about) are the processing fees charged by the private carriers.
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Im not sure what the fee was for it just said "Import duty" $20.90. Between the forwarding fees and shipping and fees im pretty sure I paid more for that than the items in the box.
I may have done the customs form incorrectly as well. The one that made the most sense in explanation on website was "gift" so I believe I used that. It said that was for personal use, the one I thought I should use said something about if youre planning to sell the items. I'd have to look again to be exactly right but I know I questioned it but chose gift in the end, not knowing exactly what was best.
Now I have my Gilmour book waiting to be sent, so I'll use the info here and hopefully itll be a bit easier and maybe avoid some of the costs.
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Permalink Reply by slappy 8955 on
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What country did they come from?
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Edited to add that this was a reply to Joshua!
I hear you and I don't doubt that they will try to screw the end-user if there is an opportunity to do so. Such is commerce.
It has been reported that UPS have actually been destroying packages because of an inability to process them:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/ups-delay-customs-ta...
My personal experience, however, for Tariff-free products has been pretty seamless thus far - touch wood. In the last two weeks I have sent 3 packages via UPS. 2 had zero admin/additional fees, the 3rd attracted about $20's worth but was a high-value item. Items sent via Royal Mail have been subject to minor delays but incurred no onward costs. For all items, local sales tax had been pre-paid by the recipient.
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Interesting that the D and G don’t seem to be overlapping any more
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