Additional Tax payable on goods bought online from USA ? Anyone familar ?

[gingeroots]

I recently ordered some hats for hairloss from an American site ,paid with credit card and thought that was it .

Then I received a £15 invoice from Fed Ex who delivered the goods .

The invoice shows £5 for "disbursements out of the scope of EU Vat "
which sounds ok I suppose .

But the £10 for " clearance Administration charge " seems a bit hefty .

The fed ex delivery people didn't knock on my door ,although I was in ,just put the small package through the letterbox and I wonder if the Admin fee would be lower if they'd collected on the spot ?

Is this tax a recently introduced thing ? I've ordered goods from America before and not had to pay this ?

Is it worth querying the admin charge ? I know I should phone ,but I hate phoning and would rather be prepared before I do .

Are there anyways to avoid this tax ?
Does it apply to some goods but not others ?

TIA .

If you order certain things (children's clothes, books etc) there is no tax payable, but other goods certainly do incur tax when imported into the UK. When I had this happen, the package was delivered by the Royal Mail and I had to pay when I collected it. Fed Ex do seem to be charging a pretty high "admin charge" but I don't know that there's much you can do about that except be aware for another time and factor in the cost. Hope this helps.

Intensely annoying, but pretty standard IME. Sorry. I don't think they have any mechanism to collect it at the point of delivery, either.

ok ,thanks for that guys .
A lesson learned !

I recently paid £8.50 admin charge with Royal Mail which I thought was very expensive too.

Me too! It was a tshirt. Didn't even realise it was from the us. Contacted company who said they'd give me store credit against next order.

I was really pissed off.

There are a few companies who can sort out / quote the import duties and taxes up front for when you're buying stuff from abroad.

It's not the only one, but Borderlinx is one of the companies that can do this.

www.borderlinx.com/pages/import-duty-explained

I sometimes order supplements from the US. I was surprised to get an £11 Customs fee recently for one supplement, which is the first time I have been billed. Later I ordered a different supplement from another US company and, no Customs fee. I can't see any difference in the ordering info, it just seems to be hit and miss.