Experience of Parcelforce / customs charges?

[Customs]

Posting in AIBU for traffic as this is worrying me - sorry

My family in France have sent a parcel with gifts. I should have to pay 0 customs charges given its value on the parcel label, HMRC have confirmed this. But for some reason, I am being asked to pay £400 for £20 of gifts!! HMRC say it's clearly an error and Parcelforce should take responsibility, Parcelforce are saying its HMRC's fault and nothing they can do. They are telling me to either pay up and claim back, or reject the parcel.

I have sent an email now to the Parcelforce Executive Team office and will try calling them tomorrow.

Does anyone have experience of anything like this? Any tips on how to handle the phone conversation?

I can't afford to pay up £400 for an error someone has made, and similarly if I reject the parcel it's not fair my family has wasted postage.

I recently had an issue with parcel force and customs and could only get it sorted out via private messaging them on Twitter. Could not get hold of anyone on the phone. However it was an easy query. From what I understand (and may be wrong) Parcelforce pay the customs charges then you pay back parcelforce. So maybe ask if that’s how they do it and if so have they paid customs £400? They should have a breakdown of costs so you can see where on earth they’ve got £400 from, whether it’s them or customs.

Thanks @Tinkywinkydinkydoo I tried Twitter and didn't get anywhere with it. They have given me a breakdown - £12 admin fee and the rest is split between import VAT and customs charge, which they say HMRC calculated so not their fault. But HMRC say they would only have done that because Parcelforce presented the value incorrectly. And apparently no one can fish out the parcel and check what on earth is going on, which also doesn't sound right!

Did the parcel have tracking on it? And did the sender have a receipt with value of items inside? With mine from a different country it clearly states it’s has been opened and checked at customs before it went to parcelforce , so in my case it was all customs doing to declare the fee I had to pay. But yours may be different. I would be getting in touch more with HMRC than parcelforce as they would have set the charge. My dad once sent me a package from the country he lives in and accidentally put the item cost as £2000 instead of £20! I had to pay the customs charge then fill in a form to reclaim it. Was a right pain, could something similar have happened?

www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-customs-dutyimport-vat-relating-to-imports-by-post-bor286

Thank you, all sorted now! The sender had done everything correctly so managed to get the charge cancelled