Customs payment

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

You have no idea what administrative process might have preceded the issue of the demand though... The "computer generated" aspeect is really of no consequence, though I can imagine your views if you'd received a demand painted onto vellum and delivered by a courier on a horse, weeks or months hence... ;-)

Have you never seen any of the TV programmes showing C&E staff dealing with the mountains of parcels in a depot, investigating some... Why would you expect it to be quick? Surley they have a stack of stuff to work through.

A week strikes me as pretty reasonable. Remember, it's you who chose to buy something from another country.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

The amount of time it takes to get through a given amount of work depends on the number of men on the job.

This was something collected by UPS from a well known (to them) supplier with all the correct paperwork. I can understand something sent by a individual requiring investigation, though.

I get similar things sent from China which come with free (inclusive) postage and don't take any longer door to door.

Perhaps illicit drugs and bombs etc only come from the US?

[Andrew Mawson]

And the number of staff that can economically be employed depends pretty much entirely on what the customer is prepared to pay for the service. Are you miffed becasuse they wouldn't let you pay MORE ?

Andrew

[whisky-dave]

No I chose digikey.co.uk they didn;t have it in stock so shipped it from the USA, so it came from teh USA and not through the digkey UK distributor. If it had gone through them as it should have digikey UK would be responsible for paying the VAT and adding it to the cost of teh device like they had on their site, I ordered it from UK not USA.

[Capitol]

That's true of any government.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They collected from me some 70 quid for what amounts to no more than the waft of a code reader in practice.

I take it you'd be happy queueing up for more than a week at a supermarket checkout just for the privilege of paying?

Do you *really* think it ok that something can be sent from the US in a couple of days total, but takes more than a week to be delivered after entering the UK?

[Adrian]

Did you pay an inc VAT price in sterling?

If so, then get onto digikey asap, because you've double-paid the VAT.

[Tim Streater]

What high service charge and for what service? Customs can take their time, you have no contract with them requiring that your item be prioritised, or even done this year.

[Fredxxx]

Different carriers provide different levels of agreement, so perhaps best to choose one that can fast track a package through customs.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Sadly, there seems to be little choice in the US. Or rather with the firms I deal with. If there were, I'd have chosen a cheaper option. And then not moaned about the time taken. ;-)

[Bob Eager]

When I've ordered from DigiKey, I've ordered on day N and it's always been delivered on day N+2 (modulo weekends). Just pay VAT (and nothing else at all) on delivery.

[Adam Funk]

I'd like to know how much they got for it at auction. I guess eBay doesn't allow things like that?

[Fredxxx]

You can arrange a UK based carrier to organise a pickup etc. I've not experienced the delays that have been conjectured in this thread.