UK - Paying Royal Mail handling Fee on GB T-Shirt

Hi All,

Just wanted to find out if anyone has had to pay a handling fee for their GB Explosive Content shirt?

I have had a £11.68 charge from the Royal Mail before they would deliver the t-shirt.

I find it happens sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't when ordering stuff from America in general.

It literally happens every time I order a GB tee and every time I have to pay exactly £13.67 fee

I'm Swedish and I had to pay 130kr (£10,40) in handling fee for a shirt.

Also Swede and also about 100 sek fee (for a 10 dollar shirt)

This does happen which is why I was happy to give away all my GB shirts to UK members.

Royal Mail apply an £8 handling fee regardless of the value, and then the import fee is the difference. I got charged that on a set of tiny paper notebooks.

Do they put "Giant Bomb" on the box?

Pretty sure it's listed as from CBSi. Rorie mentioned it in a video I was watching the other day.

Import duty+fees+VAT is why I don't bother with any American merchandise. Much as I'd like to.

I stick with the 'sale' memberships that don't come with store credit.

For what it's worth, if any part of that charge is listed as an administration or advancement fee, you can try asking them to refund that bit if they didn't give you the chance to decline delivery before you knew about the cost.

Late last year, FedEx walloped me with an £18.35 charge for delivering a couple of items from the Blizzard Gear store before it opened in Europe, £12 of which was an 'admin' fee. I told them I was happy to pay duty but not the handling fee and they took the cost down to £6.35, which was way more palatable. I used the template email below and it worked a treat:

"On [date] this year I received a parcel which had been shipped from the USA. Both prior to and at the time of the delivery there was no notification of any outstanding taxes/duties/charges owing - the parcel was only delivered and signed for.

I have now received a Duty & Tax Invoice relating to this delivery, requesting [full amount] - [x amount] in VAT and a further [y amount] in advancement/admin [delete as needed] fees.

Whilst I acknowledge that VAT of [amount] is due as the origin of the shipment is outside of the EU, I was not notified of an administration charge of [y amount] prior to accepting delivery. As I was not notified of this, I was not given any option to decline delivery and exercise my right for the parcel to be returned to the sender.

I did not enter into any contract with [carrier] to accept this charge, my contract was between myself and the shipper of the item. Any contract with [carrier] is between themselves and the shipper of the item.

I hereby request that a new invoice is issued for only the outstanding VAT of [x amount]. Please advise once this has been done and I can then pay the outstanding VAT."

Sounds a bit douchey and it might not work with everyone, but hey it saved me £12! Hope it helps some of you out.

I live in the UK and i haven't had any extra charges for any items i've ordered from the GB store.
That being said i have a challenge coin on the way, so we'll see what happens this time.

I once had to pay 50 Euro's bought 3 shirts Country was Belgium, this was 4 years back. I wonder if i had to pay extra cause customs checked it because it sayed Giant Bomb somewhere on the package.

I've had to pay them sometimes.. But this happens with pretty much everything I order from the States.

The first time I received a charge was from the same shirt, I have ordered plenty of other items over the years and never paid a charge before. Maybe it’s something to do with how they shipped that particular shirt. It’s not the worst charge but still not great espcecially if you haven’t had it happen before.

Gotta love silly charges.

As a Norwegian we usually pay at least double value of product(s)
in shipping alone and then taxes on top of that again.

So a $20usd order would cost $40 with shipping and then we pay 25% of total value
including shipping in taxes making the grand total $50usd.
Oh and half of the time the shipment is damaged and/or misdelivered.

Safe to say, as a Norwegian, shopping online is mostly out of the question.

I am from Norway . If you are careful enough ordering ,pick the cheapest shipping for 10$ it takes a month for delivery ,but you will save 20$ in import duties. Bought two t-shirts for 10 each and 10 in shipping 30$ ish in total value no duties.

Definitely sorry if this occurs for you! It seems to be happening a lot more over the past year or two than it did before that.