Sanity check please - was I 'devaluing her art' or is this seller a headcase?

[catPA]

I bought some items from an online artist based in Canada. The first purchase was for just under £200 and I paid about £45 in customs tax for that. Fine.

After my first purchase (but while it was still in transit), I looked at her Instagram and the seller had done various posts about how her business is struggling to survive, 'artist poverty is real', '30% off with code 'help me pay my electric bill' etc. I thought all this seemed a bit 'unusual,' (also possibly a bit 'tone deaf' as she lives in a huge, beautiful house by the sea and does her art full time so she can be a SAHM - not a choice many women could make)! But I thought fair enough, she's being honest; I genuinely love her art and good for her living her dream. I wanted to support her business if I could.

So I bought another item for £280 which had previously been listed at about £450 (I think). She was doing a sale across all her work.

I couldn't have afforded it at £450 and also the higher customs tax would have been a bit much for me, on balance.

Anyway, both packages didn't arrive for ages and it turned out they were being held at the post office, pending customs charges. The first package, as I said, required a £45 customs tax payment. However, the second package, required a customs tax payment of £95! I asked how that could be possible, when I had paid £280 for the item. Then I saw that the unexpectedly high customs tax was because the seller had stated the value of goods as £450 (or the equivalent in Canadian dollars).

I messaged the seller and told her that surely it's standard practice to state the actual transaction price on a package for customs purposes.

Thst was it. She was straight into "What do you expect me to do?" etc. Then went into the woe-is-me 'artist poverty is real' and how could I be devaluing her art in this way. She got very personalised very quickly. She said she will never devalue her work again because I had done that for her! She said I was essentially asking her to defraud customs. She basically said she wished she had never sold me anything because I don't value her art!

Ffs I had spent over £600 on it (with the tax). I was talking about labelling for customs tax - I believe it should be the transaction amount stated, not some previous price. How is that in my control?

In summary, she became very unprofessional with me and then blocked me.

I had left her a really positive comment on Instagram as well - before all this!

Apologies for the length.

WIBU?

Also, should I leave her a review stating my experience?

Yes it’s crazy to purposefully cause extra custom charges and she sounds like she has a God complex. Definitely leave a review in this case; she has been really unprofessional in her mistake and then in how she has handled your query/complaint.

For those posting out of UK there shouldn’t be VAT charged leaving the UK; VAT is only charged on products imported to or sold within the UK. Other countries tend to have between 17-23% import tax usually applicable above a certain value.

USA is about $800 before the recipient gets charged import tax for example. The high customs charges previous posters are talking about are often a handling/admin fee charged by the courier of around £15 which when added to any smaller import tax due soon racks up the amounts.

Ones very first economics lesson always includes the definition is that the value of a product is the price paid for it.

”I like this $ number to be written on it” means jack shit. One might almost say that she defrauded you in the third person (should that ever be a concept).

The value in art is in the creation, not the sale.

If an artist wants to be commercial - i.e. have someone else provide them with the resources to feed and clothe them in exchange for their art - they need to develop something that other people are prepared to work hours and hours in paid employment (that the artist is too precious consider would otherwise have to do themselves) in exchange for. Since the buyer only gets the object and not the satisfaction and personal fulfillment of making the art, it is hardly surprising that art is rarely worth as much to others as it is to the artist.

The artist you found, OP has a very inflated idea of their self worth and a sense of entitlement to other people’s hard work.

I agree with a PP that it's rare an artist isn't totally bonkers in one way or another. I also agree with the saying 'you can't argue with crazy' but would feel I had a responsibility to warn other buyers...
I'd write a review praising the beauty of the art (presumably you do really like it as you bought it?) ending with a brief, unemotive and factual "FYI for overseas buyers: the value stated for customs will be the original price before any discounts are applied, not the actual amount paid".

Do I agree with this? No. Am I surprised though? Also no.

I’m abroad and ordered stuff from a huge M&S clothing sale to be shipped to me thinking okay, that’ll be fine. Except M&S put the full price, not the sale price I’d paid, on customs. Maybe it was a single mistake, or maybe this is standard practice, but the customs cost absolutely sucked. I also have no idea if, here, we can get a refund if what we paid doesn’t match the listed custom amount. I’m definitely going to look into it though, because it feels like there have been several times shippers have put the full price when I’ve paid the sale price.

Nope, it doesn't benefit them in any way, they do it because they're ignorant as to how tax works in other countries (and often their own).

Sometimes it's because they think that if anything goes wrong and its missing or damaged, that they'll claim back the price marked on it but they won't, they'll (potentially) get back what they sold it for. Or we could all go around selling things for a tenner and when the postal service trash it, claiming their worth 5 million quid.

Maybe she thinks the package will get lost and she can claim the inflated price as compensation.

Definitely leave a factual review.

Artists hey? I have known them.

Yanbu. The real value of any item is the price a willing purchaser will pay. The piece originally priced at £450 clearly didn't sell at that price so wasn't worth that much. It only sold when reduced to £280 so that is its real value and she unfairly inflated the value on the customs paperwork. Would customs accept your transaction receipt as proof of the real value?

I don't think it would be unreasonable to write on an otherwise complimentary review "be cautious if ordering from outside Canada you may find unexoectedly high import taxes are charged because the artist may declare a much higher value of goods than the actual price you paid, thus increasing your costs"

I was self employed selling ceramics for a few years and I would never have spoken to a customer like that, never mind a repeat customer who spent hundreds of pounds.
I used to buy frequently from the USA and actually it was far more common
( yes, I know it was wrong ) to put a lesser value on the customs form to reduce high custom charges.
I would bend over backwards for my customers - she is batshit crazy and arrogant in the extreme. Who does she think she is, Da Vinci?
Yes, I bloody would leave a review. As a potential customer, another £100 or so on top of the purchase price would give me pause for thought at the very least.
I

Tell us the account OP. Am v curious.

@catPA

I’m wondering if you could leave a review in equally ‘flowery’ wording, but making other customers aware.

Something like :
”I was so incredibly grateful to receive such an exquisite masterpiece. My home and - indeed - life is now transformed by this artist’s exceptional talent. The plight of artists in these difficult times is heartbreaking. I felt humbled to purchase this item on sale, and felt the artist’s subsequent decision to still value this piece at its original price to customs was so meaningful. Let us all stand and say ‘art has no price, art comes from the soul’ as we hand over an additional £50 to customs.”

Interesting- as I had paid customs on stuff I got on sales from abroad, and each time they stated original value on the forms, not the reduced.

Oh my word, the cheese has well and truly slipped off her cracker...😮
Sorry you've had your fingers burned with this one OP... I'd be leaving a review!
Absolutely bonkers.
Think she might be in the throes of a Michelangelo Complex... 🤔but honestly, what a pretentious plonker! 😂

@Elber - 😂I'm very tempted

I don't think she stated the 'original value' for insurance purposes as she makes very clear on her website that once any item has been dispatched, it is not her responsibility and she is not liable for loss or damage.

@catPA

I do think there is a bit of grey area. I think customs is based on the value of the goods, not the cost. So I think the seller can put on her declaration what she believes to be the value. But her intention should have been made clear to you.

Loads of artists on Instagram and threads are batshit when it comes to people not buying or respecting their "art" sufficiently and how hard it is to make a living. They all coo over each other and say "there there, our lives are sooo hard". Id rather not sell something, than sell it because someone felt sorry for me tbh. Id want someone to buy my stuff because they liked it (said as someone who used to have a small handmade business and i shut it down rather than moan to potential customers about it being too hard. I wasnt cut out for selling.)

That's the thing about self employment. You have to work harder than you would if you were employed. Don't choose that then moan because nobody will buy your overpriced tat.

Id leave a brief, factual review about what happened and that because of her you're now £50 out of pocket. Id also report her to customs for the false declaration with no hesitation at all.

This is so smart. I never thought about it this way but that obviously makes sense. Thank you!

It's not right. If your offer of £250k was accepted on a house marketed at £300k you wouldn't expect to pay stamp duty on £300k.

Review:
The UK government must be delighted by this artists policy of (when faced with a choice of what to put on the customs ticket) declaring the original asking price not the actual price she sold it for. This policy earned their coffers an additional £50 on the alternative option of listing the price I actually paid on my chosen item.
But this is true integrity at work as at least the customs office are in no doubt as to the real value of the item in the package they processed.
I was less delighted admittedly, but I did get a free lecture with my surprise tax bill so I'm now just grateful to be not only poorer but enlightened too. 🙏

I could paint a picture, sell it for a fiver but claim it's worth millions. It's only worth what anyone will pay for it, and in this case it was £260, not £400+. She's an idiot. No wonder she's claiming poverty, sounds like she'll only get 1/2 sales out of each customer with the attitude she has.

@PoochiesPinkEars and @Elber great reviews 😂

Customs value is the price the buyer paid for the goods, not what they are 'worth' - so she should have stated it as what you paid.

That's simply the rule, nothing to do with emotions or anything else. She should have stated the price paid.

Having said that - as an artist, I can understand why she is hypersensitive about work being devalued - because it often is.

90% of the time, artists undersell themselves, usually quite significantly.

People really do not understand how much time and money go into making art, and I would imagine that at under £500 for two pieces, you were getting a very good deal.

I think her reaction was wrong, unreasonable and totally out of proportion. But the underlying issue that triggered her is very much a thing.

No. Customs is based on the price paid by the buyer. It's very clear from a quick search online that this is the rule.

"It's based on price paid or payable by the buyer to the seller for the goods when they are sold for export to the UK." - from https://www.gov.uk/guidance/prepare-to-work-out-the-customs-value-of-your-imported-goods