Anyone else got caught out buying from a '.co.uk' website only to find the goods are coming from Europe?

[Splonker]

& hence attracting tax at the border. Urghhhh. I wish it was made clearer. When I see an English (language) website with all prices in £s and a .co.uk my first thought isn't where in the world is this coming from? I'm going to have to be more careful in future. Anyone else got caught out like this?

If its goods - will there definitely still be tax to pay, we still have free movement of goods with EU but they do (simplifying complex trade law massively) have to have been manufactured there not just sold (same for UK goods). If its a website I dont know i will at least look at Google review and trust pilot before ordering, I am quite defensive though.

Yes...but luckily never arrived and i got a full refund.

Umm sort of. I bought an item on ebay on 3rd December. 'item location: Coventry.' So I got it. It was despatched (according to the tracking) on 5th December. On 6th December it said 'delivery firm waiting for package from sender... ...'

A week later I checked it again. (12th December,) and it said the same. It hadn't moved! Odd. So I emailed the seller and asked them to look into it please. The seller messaged back and said I need to be patient as the delivery company has a big load of packages to deliver. According to the info I had, the seller still had it!

Anyhoo, I received 3 other packages that I sent for AFTER this (on 4th and 5th December,) by 15th December and my other item had still not moved on from 'despatched on 5th December.' It STILL said 'item with sender.'

Well anyway, the seller did fuck-all to help/chase delivery company, so I put in a dispute with ebay, and noticed since early December multiple dozens of negative and neutral feedback had gone on, saying the seller was in CHINA, and that the items were just sent to a local depot they dealt with, and none of them had left China yet. It turned out the stuff was sent from China.

It said I should have got it by 15th December, so on 18th December, I put in my dispute, and within 12 hours, I got a refund from ebay, and the seller was most displeased. He said 'your item is on its way now. I shall want the money back!' Ebay decided to give me a refund, so take it up with them. Eeeejit. Anyway, 27th December, and it's still not here. Just says 'item with seller.'

tl;dr, I WAS mislead. They were not in Coventry!

Never happened to me.

Sympathy if you are one of the 48%. In general I think you should be told who the parcel carrier is for any online order, which whilst for other reasons would probably help you spot this.

Yes, I had to pay £40 taxes and was very annoyed; I won’t be using that website again so seems poor quality business sense not to truthfully inform us of all costs. I would have used them regularly - it was for my teens.

Yes, but the other way round! I ordered from the EU site and goods were dispatched from the UK.

Yep, although I should have known when you could pay 75p import tax insurance (luckily I did!). Courier was apparently Royal Mail. Took about 3 weeks to arrive, but it did get here.

Caveat emptor - always check delivery and T&Cs.

I did! It was all lies. 😂

I bought a gift from a valid uk company and it's still flying in from Shanghai several days later