I have to pay customs for my damn member shirt!?

I've bought stuff from the GB store before, and being a UK resident I'm used to it taking a little while to get here, however I've just got a note from the post office telling me I have to pay £14.16 in customs for my members shirt this year. What the hell! I've never had this before! I guess in the past they have sent them as a 'gift' so it doesn't need to be paid for.

Anyway, thanks to that, my $35 of t-shirts after delivery to the UK and now customs charges has cost me £48.70 or $78.39!

I'm probably not going to be buying anything else from the GB store if I have to pay so much customs tax on it.

Is it just me that had this? Did they used to send it as a gift but are now not doing that anymore?

think anything over £18 is liable to import duty. unlucky

As I understand it, it's pretty hit or miss whether or not customs catches it and charges you tax on it.

Yeah, Matty is correct. Ive received 3 GB packages over the years, and 2 got through customs without taxes, while the third didnt.

That really sucks, I guess I had just got lucky before. I've got to take this slip of card to the post office to pick up my package and regardless of if it's advisable I'm going to fight them tooth or nail to not pay it, wish me luck! :D

@Soap said:

That really sucks, I guess I had just got lucky before. I've got to take this slip of card to the post office to pick up my package and regardless of if it's advisable I'm going to fight them tooth or nail to not pay it, wish me luck! :D

Eh, good luck? It's customs...you do realize that it's not exactly a new concept, right? You "fighting them" over whether or not you should pay fucking CUSTOMS sounds like a giant waste of every ones time.

Solution: Move to a country that doesn't have such silly customs monitory regulations.

@SharkEthic said:

@Soap said:

That really sucks, I guess I had just got lucky before. I've got to take this slip of card to the post office to pick up my package and regardless of if it's advisable I'm going to fight them tooth or nail to not pay it, wish me luck! :D

Eh, good luck? It's customs...you do realize that it's not exactly a new concept, right? You "fighting them" over whether or not you should pay fucking CUSTOMS sounds like a giant waste of every ones time.

exactly. its got fuck all to do with the post office

I guess I just don't understand the point of customs then. I've bought some t-shirts and paid for them to be delivered, why do they need to get involved and take money off me? What exactly did they do in this process that was so costly? If it was take my package off a plane and put it in the back of the lorry surely that comes under my delivery fee I'm already paying?

If not, £14.16 is pretty steep for 10 seconds of moving a package around.

The price cap for imported goods being liable for customs charges has just recently been lowered, so anything over £15 can be hit with it (or anything over a certain size/weight). It's a complete nightmare for people like me, who frequently buy goods from overseas.

There's really nothing you can do about it though and like others have pointed out, it's nothing to do with the post office. It would be nice if Americans could lower their postage costs though, as that seems to be the biggest problem. Importing from the US is hugely expensive, more so than any other country I've dealt with.

@Soap:

Still worth every penny!

@Soap: You have to pay tax on goods. If you bought shirts from a shop, you'd pay tax. That's basically what customs is, getting tax on goods bought overseas.

Be thankful it's Royal Mail, they only charge 8 quid handling fee compared to FedEx who charged me a whopping 25 quid handling fee a couple years ago, the tax owed on that delivery was only about a fiver.

Dude, it's just VAT and a small processing fee. You're obliged to pay 20% tax on just about everything you buy or have imported into the country except for basic food products. Technically you're also liable for the two previous packages that you received from GB, so just count yourself lucky that Customs missed those, pay the fee and chalk this up as a learning experience.

Same here in Switzerland! Got to pay an import tax on everything.

Thanks for all the comments guys, getting stuff from the GB store has been pretty much my first experience with international shipping of stuff so I was unaware of a lot of this. I guess I'll just pay the customs tax and get over it.

Thanks all!

Hope you enjoy your 78 dollar shirt!

Wow. In Australia I can import anything up to $1000 before any import taxes are levied. The lucky country indeed.

I remember I ordered The Matrix Online from GameStop in America and had to pay ridiculous import tax on it. It put me off ever ordering from America again.

So I went to the Royal Mail depo in my town, it was pretty out of the way, the guy told me they didn't have a card machine though so I'd have to pay cash (a possible 20 minute walk into town to get money and back in my lunch break) luckily I had just enough change in my wallet to make it up though.

Lesson learn't and then some.

I import a lot of stuff, and I've never had any customs fees. When do they apply, exactly? (I live in Australia if that has anything to do with it).

@AsperGamer said:

Wow. In Australia I can import anything up to $1000 before any import taxes are levied. The lucky country indeed.

Yeah, but you guys have to pay like $200 for video games, so it kinda evens out.

@NekuSakuraba said:

I import a lot of stuff, and I've never had any customs fees. When do they apply, exactly? (I live in Australia if that has anything to do with it).

We can buy up to $1000 in goods before there is any taxes.

@Ravenlight said:

@AsperGamer said:

Wow. In Australia I can import anything up to $1000 before any import taxes are levied. The lucky country indeed.

Yeah, but you guys have to pay like $200 for video games, so it kinda evens out.

No, we pay $100 a game on release. However, we also earn as much as 3 times what a typical lower paid American earns, so that evens it out in favour of Australia.

@AsperGamer said:

No, we pay $100 a game on release. However, we also earn as much as 3 times what a typical lower paid American earns, so that evens it out in favour of Australia.

Curse you and your high-yield kangaroo markets!

I have never had to pay for any of my GB packages, and there have been a lot. Some of them large. it's weird. Yet my first cards against humanity set I had to pay,and the second one I didn't. Pretty crazy.

@Ravenlight said:

@AsperGamer said:

No, we pay $100 a game on release. However, we also earn as much as 3 times what a typical lower paid American earns, so that evens it out in favour of Australia.

Curse you and your high-yield kangaroo markets!

Move to Australia and enjoy all that it offers - snakes, sharks, crocodiles, spiders and a bird that can rip out your insides (cassowary). We have something for everyone!

@AsperGamer said:

@Ravenlight said:

@AsperGamer said:

No, we pay $100 a game on release. However, we also earn as much as 3 times what a typical lower paid American earns, so that evens it out in favour of Australia.

Curse you and your high-yield kangaroo markets!

Move to Australia and enjoy all that it offers - snakes, sharks, crocodiles, spiders and a bird that can rip out your insides (cassowary). We have something for everyone!

Australia has always seemed like the scariest place on earth to live. I'd constantly be checking for something that could kill me.

governments will take every single opportunity to suck off just a little more blood from the people

The price cap for imported goods being liable for customs charges has just recently been lowered, so anything over £15 can be hit with it (or anything over a certain size/weight). It's a complete nightmare for people like me, who frequently buy goods from overseas.

There's really nothing you can do about it though and like others have pointed out, it's nothing to do with the post office. It would be nice if Americans could lower their postage costs though, as that seems to be the biggest problem. Importing from the US is hugely expensive, more so than any other country I've dealt with.

I've been a subscriber since the start and my first subscription came with the very first Whiskey Media shirt. They mailed that sucker to me here in Denmark and customs went after me for more than 300DKR (Danish Kroner)... essentially more than 50USD. Needless to say, I'm glad they don't force a shirt on members anymore because I enjoy just forgoing the shirt and saving myself from getting screwed by customs.

That being said, if customs here wasn't completely evil, I'd be buying GB shirts like a mofo...

@Hailinel: The post office actually has made a profit, but has been put into debt by politicians taking the profit and then puting it towards funding other departments. It's a shame because these people are in bed with corporations like FedEx, but US postage is as cheap as it gets for mailing goods.

In simpler words, the postal service is being forced into debt through scams even though they're making a profit.

@AsperGamer said:

Wow. In Australia I can import anything up to $1000 before any import taxes are levied. The lucky country indeed.

That's a former prison colony for you. :D

I've bought stuff from the GB store before, and being a UK resident I'm used to it taking a little while to get here, however I've just got a note from the post office telling me I have to pay £14.16 in customs for my members shirt this year. What the hell! I've never had this before! I guess in the past they have sent them as a 'gift' so it doesn't need to be paid for.

Anyway, thanks to that, my $35 of t-shirts after delivery to the UK and now customs charges has cost me £48.70 or $78.39!

I'm probably not going to be buying anything else from the GB store if I have to pay so much customs tax on it.

Is it just me that had this? Did they used to send it as a gift but are now not doing that anymore?

Sorry to bump this but I just got my new shirt, and to my surprise I had to pay import tax on my free member shirt so I wanted to vent for a bit.

In my case I blame it on the fact that the label said "PayPal - Giant Bomb Yearly Membership - $50", in stead of "Giant Bomb Membership Shirt - complimentary". Or the shipping costs. Or even just the price of what the shirt would've cost, since that is well below the threshold for import tax in my case.

Before this I paid for the membership with creditcard, so I'm not sure what it said then, but this is the first time I had to pay import tax on an order from GB.

It's also a shame they don't split it up on the invoice either, so I have no real chance to fight it. I sent an email to support about changing the label, so hopefully some other people will be spared the headache in the future.

@reddin said:

Sorry to bump this but I just got my new shirt, and to my surprise I had to pay import tax on my free member shirt so I wanted to vent for a bit.

In my case I blame it on the fact that the label said "PayPal - Giant Bomb Yearly Membership - $50", in stead of "Giant Bomb Membership Shirt - complimentary". Or the shipping costs. Or even just the price of what the shirt would've cost, since that is well below the threshold for import tax in my case.

Before this I paid for the membership with creditcard, so I'm not sure what it said then, but this is the first time I had to pay import tax on an order from GB.

It's also a shame they don't split it up on the invoice either, so I have no real chance to fight it. I sent an email to support about changing the label, so hopefully some other people will be spared the headache in the future.

My guess is for legal reason they have to write the full costs of your order.

And seeing as you paid $50 for a membership + tshirt, then that's what the order is worth. (plus shipping!)

But hey, I could be wrong.

@Sneeze:

Pretty sure they just have to declare what's in the package, and since they're not sending me the membership, but only the shirt that's what I should be paying tax over.

If it was split in the invoice I would go through the effort to see the specifics of how this works/ if I can get it waived, but as it is it's just not going to happen.

Some info that might be useful (from a UK perspective, at least)...

Going on my experience of buying stuff from Japan, Customs can be avoided by going for the cheapest delivery option. Whenever I went for the super quick option, it set off Customs every single time. Strangely, the cheaper option usually results in the item arriving quicker due to no messing around from HMRC (and no additional charges from the courier). I'm not sure if the same is true of packages from the US, but it might be worth giving it a shot if the option is ever open to you.

...that said, it's been a year or so since I last did that, so they may have tightened their grip a bit.

Just move to the good ole US of A and all your problems will be solved.

Clothes are extempted from toll here in Norway, which is great for me since the toll-limit hasn't changed since the 70s(about 30USD)

Solution: Move to a country that doesn't have such silly customs monitory regulations.

@AlisterCat: Where did you order cards against humanity from? I looked at Amazon UK but people were wanting crazy money for them.

Hot button issues.

http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/shipping-costs-for-gb-store-to-overseas-1463001/